Bitcoin crime lords

A new report has found that “two groups of highly sophisticated cybercriminals likely have stolen some $1 billion in cryptocurrency” in recent years, said Paul Vigna in The Wall Street Journal. Cryptocurrency investors and exchanges—markets for buying and selling Bitcoin and other virtual currencies—have been frequent targets of hackers, who have stolen more than $1.7 billion in total. Transactions made with Bitcoin are anonymous, like traditional cash, which “makes catching hackers difficult.” Investigators with the research group Chainanalysis believe that most of the publicly known thefts can be linked to two groups. One may have partly “nonmonetary goals,” while the other is “absolutely focused on the money.” Chainanalysis found that the stolen cybercurrency was typically converted into cash—after being transferred an average of 5,000 times to hide hackers’ tracks. November, three weeks after 20,000 of its employees walked out to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment cases. The filing was revealed last week through a Freedom of Information Act request. Because Google’s workers “are spread around the globe and don’t have most co-workers’ personal emails,” its “employee email system played a pivotal role in the organizing for that protest.” Google’s push is surprising, because the company publicly expressed support for the goals of the protest.