Police are issuing a strong warning to businesses following a serious hacking and ransom attack on an international company based in Brisbane in recent months.Earlier this year, the organisation’s computer system was hacked and data pertaining to sensitive operations involving the company and their business was stolen.The hackers demanded a ransom be paid in Bitcoin (equating to thousands of dollars).Following this a further extortion demand for a larger amount was made of the business.The business refused and contacted police.Hackers then profiled a senior member of the organisation, identified their family and threatened to discredit members of his family through online attacks particularly targeting a child.“This is a very serious attack on an organisation and quite traumatic for the business, the victim and his family,” Acting Assistant Commissioner, State Crime Command Brian Hay said.“We are strongly urging business to ensure their computer systems are secure and protected from hackers, that they adopt a policy of not paying ransom demands and carefully consider the information posted on social media.

“Organisations need to think about putting in place a strategy to counteract or respond to these type of incidents.But the one message that I cannot stress enough is to never comply with extortion demands and report these matters to us immediately,” Acting Assistant Commissioner Hay said.If you have information for police, contact Policelink on 131 444 or provide information using the online form 24hrs per day..au 24hrs per day.It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for.Perhaps searching can help.Bitcoin has seen an astonishing number of highs and lows in its brief life – a single bitcoin is worth about $306 at the time of writing, down from more than $1300 in November 2014 – while a number of legal and security challenges mean it hasn’t yet broken into the mainstream for payments.But there’s one part of the Bitcoin story that could have more wide-reaching effects in our world than the financial side: the blockchain.“What’s interesting about Bitcoin isn’t the currency itself, but rather the underlying technology, the blockchain,” explained Primavera De Filippi, research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, speaking at Nesta’s FutureFest.

“It’s the decentralised public ledger that relies on cryptography in order to ensure that every transaction is valid.” The way it works makes the blockchain an ideal way to ensure transparency and integrity when the two parties involved in any business don’t trust each other – one person can send another a bitcoin without knowing a thing about the other, and the system ensures the transaction takes place as promised.And since it’s decentralised, no individual controls it; it acts as a virtual, trusted middleman.Such features make it an intriguing alternative to everything from banks to Silicon Valley tech giants, advocates argue, with De Filippi comparing the decentralised freedom it offers to similar hopes for the internet in its early days.The blockchain principle could become the engine behind new financial systems, smart contracts and even democracy itself.However, the complicated nature of the system means there’s a lot of work that has to happen before this all becomes a reality.

Blockchain explained Basically, the Bitcoin blockchain tracks who sent how many bitcoins where.If Bob sends bitcoin #123456 to Susan, it’s marked in the blockchain.bitcoin nz lawThat record isn’t held in any single place, but copied to every Bitcoin user, each of whom holds the entire transaction record for themselves.bitcoin nyse symbolYou can add to the ledger, but you can’t remove anything – there are far too many copies with which to meddle.phoenix litecoin miningTransactions are validated by proof of work (that is, the mining at the heart of Bitcoin), with the coins dished out to reward people for validating transactions.bitcoin amazon voucher

Blockchain fans see it as a way to ditch the middleman, to get rid of the Silicon Valley firms that hold a single copy of our online “transactions” and take control of it for ourselves.ethereum chrome pluginBob could send a message to Susan, or a sum of money, or anything else, and the record would verify it, without the need for a third party, such as a bank or email provider.litecoin payment processorSmart contracts This is the idea behind smart contracts, which act like a computer program: if this, then that.litecoin gbp rateIf the first person pays the fee, then the second person gets the product.bitcoin de0De Filippi describes such activity as “automated transactions between humans and machines, or between multiple machines, which are automatically executed and automatically enforced by the underlying code of the technology”.bitcoin master seed

One such transaction is betting: everyone places their bets in a secure, neutral account, and the program doles out the winnings once the results are in.It’s been suggested that everything from mortgages to online shopping could be managed via smart contracts, with the blockchain ledger executing the hand-off of money and goods in a neutral manner.Car rentals or leases could be managed in the same way: while you’re making your payments, your digital ignition key will continue to work; if you don’t, it will be disabled.Such smart contracts could benefit the sharing economy.At the moment, this is held back by the fact that we don’t trust each other, so have to run our transactions and negotiations through a trusted third party – more often than not a major American firm.De Filippi said that a blockchain “can be used for performing automated transactions in a trustless environment, in a language that is both computable and unambiguous,” and that could include anything from basic legal contracts and notarisations to financial trades.

Blockchain programming It’s capable of going much further, however.“When we combine multiple smart contracts together, we can create decentralised autonomous organisations, which can be considered autonomous agents, both in that they’re independent and also that once they’ve been deployed on the blockchain, they don’t need the creator and no longer need to listen to them,” she said.“They’re self-sufficient, in that they can charge users for the service they provide in order to pay for the processing they need.” Such programs can be used to provide distributed and secure data storage, and even to build distributed applications, such as file-sharing or social networks.They could also create “government systems that are generally more flat, more transparent and allow for potentially more democratic and participatory decision-making,” she added.An electoral blockchain could let votes be registered in a simple, secure and transparent way, with a contract on the other side for the end result to be delivered.

It could even change how apps and services are run, noted Vitalik Buterin, founder of blockchain platform Ethereum.Imagine an app that’s built but gets shut down after it’s bought by a larger company, leaving its users cut adrift.If the program had been designed in a decentralised way, it couldn’t be shut down.“A blockchain is this magically decentralised computer that’s going to keep running your program faithfully for as long as it exists.You have no ability to change it,” said Buterin.Blockchain: the downsides Although he runs a firm based on the idea, Buterin admits that “the journey of decentralised tech is complicated”.As appealing as it is to “get rid of the evil middlemen,” Buterin noted that there’s value in the firms that stand between us and our transactions, pointing out that payment systems let us reverse charges in the case of scammers, for example.There are other potential downsides to relying on blockchains too.At the heart of our human interactions are ideas such as equity, mercy and compassion, De Filippi noted, and we can’t code for such ideas.