A hacker is threatening to expose the identity Satoshi Nakamoto, after claiming to have compromised the email account of the Bitcoin creator.
The anonymous post on Pastebin demands 25BTC, or around $11,000, be sent to a Bitcoin address.
The Pastebin post contains links to screenshots of a GMX email account’s inbox apparently proving the hack is legitimate, although these can’t be verified for authenticity.
However, 'theymos', the administrator of Bitcoin Forum posted the following (via The Guardian):
“Today I received an email from satoshin@gmx.com (Satoshi's old email address), the contents of which make me almost certain that the email account is compromised. The email was not spoofed in any way. It seems very likely that either Satoshi's email account in particular or gmx.com in general was compromised, and the email account is now under the control of someone else. Perhaps satoshin@gmx.com expired and then someone else registered it.”
The hacker also appears to have accessed accounts on various forums connected to the email address satoshin@gmx.com, including p2pfoundation, claiming that the Bitcoin supremo’s “passwords and IP addresses are being sold on the darknet.”
The bizarre message continues:
“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.”
An email sent by Infosecurity to the GMX address in question bounced back, indicating that the account has already been closed.
It also seems unlikely that a hacker with Nakamoto’s genuine email address would merely look to extort money via this method when there are myriad other ways to monetise their ill-gotten gains.
The identity of the person or persons behind the crypto-currency has been a mystery for years, although Newsweek thought it had the scoop of the decade when it claimed to have found the man himself back in March.
However, that Satoshi Nakamoto, of Temple City in California, told reporters it was a case of mistaken identity.