Hackers Claim They Know Who the Creator of Bitcoin is and Seek Payment for Info
posted Sunday Sep 14, 2014 by Nicholas DiMeo
The Bitcoin saga is an interesting one. Amidst the violent ups and downs of the virtual currency, there has been a constant question on the minds of everyone. People have been wanting to know who the founder and creator of Bitcoin is. We know that the name Satoshi Nakamoto has been tossed around but we've not been able to put a face to the name. Whoever it is has made it very difficult to trace the concept of Bitcoin back to him or her. Even Newsweek went down a rabbit hole and came up empty-handed and confused. That was all true until this week, when we may have a new lead on who could've created Bitcoin.
Hackers have apparently gotten into Nakamoto's email address and have sent out emails and posted to Pastebin messages requesting payment for the hackers to disclose the true identity of the creator of Bitcoin. In the different messages, there have been five different Bitcoin addresses to send payment to, saying that, "Satoshis dox, passwords and IP addresses will be published when this address has reached 25 BTC."
Like we mentioned in previous articles, Satoshi could be a false name for an entire group of people for all we know. However the hackers have made it seem that it's one person and they know who it is. But given that they're hackers whose sole mission is to profit from others' loss, all of this could be a hoax. We do know that somebody has accessed the email account satoshin@gmx.com, which is the email address included in the original Bitcoin documents. We also have seen small snippets of information that the hackers have posted online, but again, that could all be fabricated.
Then there's the warning directed to Satoshi and his/her safety. A message posted on the P2P Foundation forum said,
Dear Satoshi. Your dox, passwords and IP addresses are being sold on the darknet. Apparently you didn't configure Tor properly and your IP leaked when you used your email account sometime in 2010. You are not safe. You need to get out of where you are as soon as possible before these people harm you. Thank you for inventing Bitcoin.
So, hackers are trying to extort money from people in order to reveal who Satoshi really is. Should we really play into this? If someone created something, no matter how revered it may be, do we have a right to know who it is and demand that the person speak to the public? Bitcoin isn't a publicly-traded company or anything, so shouldn't we respect the privacy of the ones behind the creation? A lot of questions have been raised by this new bit of information. It'll be interesting to see what happens if the documents are released.