Tor: 'Mystery' spike in hidden addresses
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
From the release notes,
Starting with Tor version 0.2.7.1 it is possible, through Tor's control socket API, to create and destroy 'ephemeral' hidden services programmatically. Bitcoin Core has been updated to make use of this.
This means that if Tor is running (and proper authorization is available), Bitcoin Core automatically creates a hidden service to listen on, without manual configuration. Bitcoin Core will also use Tor automatically to connect to other .onion nodes if the control socket can be successfully opened. This will positively affect the number of available .onion nodes and their usage.
This new feature is enabled by default if Bitcoin Core is listening, and a connection to Tor can be made. It can be configured with the -listenonion, -torcontrol and -torpassword settings. To show verbose debugging information, pass -debug=tor
Not all of them are going to be on machines with Tor running.
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2016-Februar...
At the moment we get hundreds of Locky mails per day.
There is a huge spike in ransomware at the moment. And all ransom has to be paid via a tor location.
IIRC last time I checked the Word doc on virustotal it was picked up 22/55.
Fortunately at least AV did pick up the payload when a user let the macro run...
Edit, ran it by virustotal again and got 28/55
One possibility, he said, might be a sudden swell in the popularity of Ricochet, an app that uses Tor to allow anonymous instant messaging between users.
This means that if Tor is running (and proper authorization is available), Bitcoin Core automatically creates a hidden service to listen on, without manual configuration. Bitcoin Core will also use Tor automatically to connect to other .onion nodes if the control socket can be successfully opened. This will positively affect the number of available .onion nodes and their usage.
This new feature is enabled by default if Bitcoin Core is listening, and a connection to Tor can be made. It can be configured with the -listenonion, -torcontrol and -torpassword settings. To show verbose debugging information, pass -debug=tor.