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By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News
Cyber-thieves are attempting to cash in on the rising value of the bitcoin
virtual currency.
Bitcoins have almost tripled in value in a month. In late February one bitcoin
was worth 22 ($33) but now each one sells for about 60 ($90).
Thieves who run networks of hijacked PCs are increasingly using these machines
to create or "mine" the coins.
But bitcoin miners say thieves will struggle to keep up, as coin-generating
technology becomes more sophisticated.
Computer cash
As a virtual currency, bitcoins depend on a wide network of closely connected
computers to log who holds the coins and where they are spent.
That network also shares information about who is "mining" the coins.
Mining involves solving a hard mathematical problem and miners typically use
large numbers of computers to speed up the number crunching involved.
"Botnet mining is fundamentally theft of private property, illegal and
unethical," Jeff Garzik, a bitcoin developer told the BBC, adding that bitcoin
miners had battled botnets for years, seeing them as a "cost and a burden" they
just had to deal with.
Many cyber-thieves who control botnets, large networks of home PCs compromised
with a virus, were using them as a dedicated mining pool in a bid to generate
bitcoins for themselves, said Derek Manky, senior security strategist at
Fortinet.
The operators of one of the biggest current botnets, known as ZeroAccess, had
recently ramped up their efforts to use machines they control to mine bitcoins,
he said, adding that millions of infected PCs were unwittingly enrolled in the
criminal network.
"ZeroAccess has employed an affiliate model," he said. "They pay other people
to install malware for them."
The operators of ZeroAccess were making so much money that they were paying
high prices for each infection. Current rates ran at about $100 ( 65) for every
1,000 infections, said Mr Manky.
As well as mining bitcoins, PCs enrolled in ZeroAccess were also being used to
poison search results - to cause users to unwittingly click on booby-trapped
web pages - or fraudulently click on adverts to generate revenue.
"ZeroAccess has been extremely profitable," said Mr Manky.
The wider bitcoin community was aware of the efforts botnet owners were making
to produce their own cash, said Mr Manky.
Circuit board Bitcoin miners are turning to dedicated hardware to generate the
virtual coins
"They try to detect and remove these transactions but it's a bit of a cat and
mouse game," he said. "The operators of ZeroAccess know about that and just
change their tactics."
However, said Mr Garzik, criminal participation in bitcoin mining was likely to
get much less profitable as professional miners turned away from using desktop
PCs to generate the coins.
Increasingly, he said, professional miners were using custom-made chips, called
Asics (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits), to mine because such
processors worked faster.
"It is theorised that the current shift in bitcoin mining to 'Asic' miners -
the fastest and most advanced generation - will simply make it unprofitable for
botnet miners," said Mr Garzik.
Vitalik Buterin, technical editor at Bitcoin Magazine, said the the rise of
Asic mining meant cyber-thieves would soon be pushed out.
Currently, he said, only about one-third of all professional miners were using
Asics, but as that proportion grew, the number of bitcoins that could be
generated with a botnet would shrink.
"The fact that botnets are (somewhat) viable now is basically an aberration
resulting from the massive price increase that has not yet been matched by
increased mining activity," he said. " Once Bitcoin stabilises again the
botnets will rapidly crawl back into the shadows."