The alternative is bartering, but that is complicated and inefficient. For this to happen, money must do three things.įirst, money must serve as a medium of exchange: you pay tuition you receive an education in exchange. They are money because people accept them as money. None of these objects, except for the gold and cocoa beans, has any meaningful inherent value. At one time, playing cards served as money, as well as cowrie shells, cocoa beans, gold and, eventually, bank notes and coins. The reason I’m showing it to you is because it illustrates how money has changed throughout history. It hangs in one of the Bank of Canada’s meeting rooms. The image you see above, is a painting by Canadian artist Blair Ferguson. When you look at history, money and payment systems reflect the societies they serve - and like societies, they have been transformed by technology. It matters to the Bank because of the potential over time for e-money to alter the fundamental payments architecture in Canada and around the world. It’s also about the financial risks you face if you use it. This matters to you because e-money is not just about how you pay for things. Finally, I’ll talk about the benefits and risks of these innovations. Second, to get a sense of proportion, I’ll talk about how e-money is currently being used relative to other payment options like cash or debit. Money and associated means of payment have changed over the years, but it seems never as fast as they are changing today. First, I’ll start with a brief historical perspective. The Bank of Canada is paying close attention to e-money, given that our job is to issue currency, promote financial stability and oversee Canada’s payment systems. It’s fascinating the way technology and consumer preferences are pushing the boundaries of how we define and use money. What has changed, though, is how we pay for things. Many things haven’t changed much since then - many of you must pick up a coffee on the way to class or catch up with friends at Wilf’s. And I picked up extra cash working as a waitress at Wilf’s. That’s when coffee cost less than a dollar and long before I had a credit card. When I was a student at Wilfrid Laurier in the 1980s, I started every day with a coffee, and I bought that coffee with cash. I am also honoured to be your first economist-in-residence for a day. Šurda believes that the attackers exploiting this vulnerability to gain remote access are primarily looking for private keys of Electrum bitcoin wallets stored on the compromised device, using which they could/might have stolen bitcoins.īitmessage developers have since fixed the vulnerability with the release of new PyBitmessage version 0.6.3.2.I am happy to be back here in Waterloo to speak with you today about money in a digital world. "My old Bitmessage addresses are to be considered compromised and not to be used," Šurda tweeted. Since his Bitmessage addresses were most likely considered to be compromised, he suggested users not to contact him at that address. If the attacker transferred your Bitcoins, please contact me (here on Reddit)." "The automated script looked in ~/.electrum/wallets, but when using the reverse shell, he had access to other files as well.
The attacker ran an automated script but also opened, or tried to open, a remote reverse shell," Bitmessage core developer Peter Šurda explained in a Reddit thread. "The exploit is triggered by a malicious message if you are the recipient (including joined chans).
#Lite wallet bitmessage code
According to Bitmessage developers, a critical zero-day remote code execution vulnerability, described as a message encoding flaw, affects PyBitmessage version 0.6.2 for Linux, Mac, and Windows and has been exploited against some of their users.