{"id":7197,"date":"2019-02-06T18:20:31","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T18:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/child-abuse-images-hidden-in-crypto-currency-block-chain\/"},"modified":"2019-02-06T18:20:31","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T18:20:31","slug":"child-abuse-images-hidden-in-crypto-currency-block-chain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/child-abuse-images-hidden-in-crypto-currency-block-chain\/","title":{"rendered":"Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency block chain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"AImage copyright<\/span>
\n Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Images of child sexual abuse have been found embedded in the system powering a high-profile crypto-currency.<\/p>\n

Somebody added the illegal images to the core ledger of Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) by using a payment processor.<\/p>\n

This ledger, known as the block chain, is a running record of crypto-currency transactions, shared among users of the platform.<\/p>\n

Experts have warned that abuse of block chain technology is a growing problem.<\/p>\n

How did this happen?<\/h2>\n

The block chain is central to the way many crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin work and in theory stops people making fake transactions or manipulating their account balance.<\/p>\n

One key feature of the block chain is that information added to it cannot be changed without significant effort. <\/p>\n

In January, the amount of data that could be added to the BSV block chain was increased significantly.<\/p>\n

Before that, people could generally add only short chunks of text or web links to the block chain.<\/p>\n

But now it is possible to add full images in an encoded format. <\/p>\n

Payment system Money Button said its service had been used to post the illegal images<\/a> on the BSV block chain in early February.<\/p>\n

UK laws state that<\/a> the simple possession of indecent photographs of children is an offence and any distribution of such material can warrant a longer prison sentence.<\/p>\n

Zero tolerance<\/h2>\n

Jimmy Nguyen, founder of crypto-cash company nChain, which oversees the BSV currency, said it had “zero tolerance” for illegal use of the system. <\/p>\n

“The Bitcoin SV block chain is not a place for criminal activity – and if you use it for illegal purposes, you will leave a digitally signed evidence trail that cannot be erased,” he told BBC News. <\/p>\n

“We stand ready to work with global law enforcement authorities to stamp out this and any other illegal misuse of Bitcoin.” <\/p>\n

Ryan Charles, founder of Money Button, said: “Since most businesses increased the size of allowed data recently, making it possible to post large files, criminals are trying to push the limits.”<\/p>\n

Easily accessible<\/h2>\n

The abuse images embedded in the BSV block chain were spotted when they appeared on Bitcoinfiles.org.<\/p>\n

The website lets people browse a rolling list of messages and other content added to the block chain. <\/p>\n

The appearance of the images prompted police to investigate. Bitcoinfiles.org has since closed the block chain browsing service.<\/p>\n

In addition, Money Button has banned the user that uploaded the material.<\/p>\n

It has also put in place filtering systems to spot when anyone tries to upload similar content. Money Button is part-funded by nChain.<\/p>\n

“Criminals should understand that everything on the block chain is signed, time-stamped, and linked to everything else,” said Mr Charles. <\/p>\n

“We have all the information we need to track down criminals and prosecute them.”<\/p>\n

Information about the person who uploaded the images has been passed to the authorities.<\/p>\n

‘Not yet mature’<\/h2>\n

Eric Erstu, who runs the Cryptograffiti website that lets people read messages embedded in the Bitcoin block chain, said: “There is nothing that could have prevented this from happening in other block chains.<\/p>\n

“It takes special care to seek and find illegal content from any block chain, as it is not a trivial process,” he told BBC News.<\/p>\n

“As for law enforcement, they would have to do the good old detective work in hope of tracking down the person who uploaded the illegal content on the block chain. <\/p>\n

“Since everything you do on the block chain is immutable, tracking down criminals is not too difficult.”<\/p>\n

Block chain researcher Roman Matzutt, from the University of Aachen, in Germany, who has studied the problem of people uploading illegal content<\/a> to the block chain, warned it had become a “pressing issue”.<\/p>\n

He said there was “ongoing research” to find ways to remove such content from block chains but these were “not yet mature”. <\/p>\n

And there was a “lack of sufficient sustainable solutions apart from making content insertion into public block chains hard”.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright Getty Images Images of child sexual abuse have been found embedded in the system powering a high-profile crypto-currency. Somebody added the illegal images to the core ledger of Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) by using a payment processor. This ledger, known as the block chain, is a running record of crypto-currency transactions, shared among … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}