Bit Coin Vulnerability: From Outside and Within

Right across the Internet the words 'Bit' and 'Coin' are becoming synonymous with how to buy and sell things. Like the last big invention in buying and selling online, PayPal, Bit Coin is making its mark and stamping it hard.

More and more individuals and online businesses are looking to use Bit Coin as a currency (as are we in the coming weeks and months) and as such you, the potential user of such a valuable asset, should be aware of the pitfalls.

Now we would all like to think that regardless of what we do on the Internet we are safe whilst doing it but the truth is that it just doesn't work that way. For everything that goes right there is an individual - or group of individuals - out to cause mischief and mayhem or simply relieve us of our hard earned money be it virtual or otherwise.

With online banking having become more secure over the years with 124-bit encryption as standard the ways in which the hacker or online thief can get at your finances have had to change in relation to the methods by which they have been thwarted. And to this end now that there is a virtual currency out there, there are people who will try and exploit that.

There are a variety of ways in which Bit Coin wallets can be 'drained' of their resources online which is why a great number of Bit Coin users still favour the old method of keeping a copy offline on their computer; thus reducing the risk of attack using software and hardware firewalls.

Whilst the vulnerability that comes from outside is often the actions of individuals concerned only with 'draining' your wallet the main vulnerability you might face with a copy of your wallet on a storage device is that device's failure.

Whilst we cannot go into the specifics as to how certain things are done we can tell you that a wallet upon first creation using a Bit Coin software program is unencrypted. To this end the user must opt in to the encryption scheme and failure to do means that their wallet is unprotected online. Some hackers even favour attacking the user's computer with a few to altering the time on the BIOS clock giving the impression that transactions that have already occurred have not occurred have yet to occur and can be doubled up on.

Again whilst we have mentioned this in passing we have not going into specifics and would not dream of doing so but these are some of the reasons as to why for the most part the majority of Bit Coin users hold their wallets offline.

And this is where we come in because whilst these wallets are being held offline i.e. on your hard drive, then they are susceptible to the same problems as other data on a storage device that has suffered a failure. Inaccessibility due to bad sectors, a complete failure of the drive because of a power surge or physical damage, hardware and software conflicts; all of these are just as likely to render your Bit Coin unusable as they would with other data such as word processing documents, photographs, audio and video, spreadsheets; indeed anything you would store to hard drive.

With this in mind we recommend the following if your drive fails:

1. Switch off the machine immediately the problem occurs.
2. If there are error messages displayed then switch off the machine before the problem can worsen.
3. Disconnect the power to prevent any other users making the problem worse inadvertently.
4. If necessary and possible, remove the computer to a safe location, so that it cannot be used by anyone else.
5. Contact us as soon as possible using the details to be found on our Contact Us page.
To get the best start with Bitcoins go to  http://tinyurl.com/m9lm96d and be on your way to earning the income you deserve. 

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