BitCoin Buyers Annoyed At US Government For Leaking List of Potential Bidders
In what is becoming an all too common occurrence in the news headlines, private data was issued by mistake recently by the U. S. Marshall Service (USMS) who setup a BitCoin auction.
The BitCoins in question come from a seizure made during an FBI raid last September at the offices of Silk Road, the underground online trading post for legal and illicit goods founded by Ross William Ulbrich. The BitCoins are supposed to have come from profits from commissions that the founder of the Silk Road accumulated during its short life.
Auction Size
The auction size is 30,000 BitCoins which have a value of over $17 million depending on the traded value of the BitCoin at the time of the transaction.
How The Breach Happened
The security gaffe that revealed a partial list of interested bidders in the BitCoin auction came about when all the potential bidders were emailed and copied into the email. This is known as CC-ing someone, creating a carbon copy, as opposed to BCC aka a blind carbon copy where the recipient cannot see of who else was sent the email too.
In this way, anyone looking at the email header information could see the full list of BitCoin interested parties who put their details forward and whom paid a substantial deposit.
Confidence Lost
Confidence is tough to come by, but this certainly is not a good start for the USMS. Such a list can indicate who else is trading in BitCoins, including BitCoin competitors and other investors who it was not previously known that they owned this e-currency at all.
The USMS is the first U.S. agency to hold such an auction of this unusual digital currency. It must be hoped that more care will be taken in the future by any similar agency or police force that wishes to offload similar caches of seized BitCoins such as local law enforcement or the IRS.
An apology was issued about the data breach suggesting that it was not intentional, but that hardly walks the mistake back. The information on interested parties is now out there. An apology was only issued after the BitCoin news site, CoinDesk, made the information public.
