For those who asked for more deadlines, December 14 is the last day to oppose this trademark aplication at the US Patent Office:

Trademark application for: BITCOIN
Serial Number    86135516
Goods and Services : Barware, namely, flasks, bottle openers, corkscrews; beverage glassware; housewares and accessories, namely, shot glasses, and decanters

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4810:x6ra4a.2.13

If the link does not work, go to http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/ and search for "bitcoin".

The trademark seems limited to barware, so it may not prevent the sale of abstract bit patterns under that name.  But it may prevent sending beers as bitcoins. 

If you buy fake merchandise, your loss is usually limited to the article.  Someone who buys a fake malicious Trezor may lose millions.  The victims will be much more motivated to get their money back, and SatoshiLabs will be the only target they can sue.  The victims will argue that SL is responsible because they did not warn people about the risk of buying Trezors from resellers.

For the same reason, I hope that SL is taking adequate measures to physically secure their storage and shipping operations.  How much would it take to convince an employee to switch some Trezors before shipping?


Exactly.


Yes, all of that too, and more....


You have heard of fake ATMs, right?


The Trezor may be even safer than an off-line computer (if malware gets installed in that computer, it may be able to do a weak-key attack, or leak the private key in the signed transaction.)  Basically, the Trezor is an offline computer that is dedicated to a few bitcoin-related tasks and therefore is more difficult to compromise.  Trezor is certainly much safer than that competition hardware wallet without display.  But owners must be aware that it is still far from 100% safe.

My guess is that several of the 5 kBTC chunks were bids by the same syndicate; the syndicte merged those chunks, and now is distributing the coins to individual sub-bidders.

Well, many Trezor customers and prospective customers do not seem to be aware of that risk yet.   And I am not sure that the SatoshiLabs people are aware of the risk that they incur by tacitly approving the re-selling of their Trezors.

Here is one BCI user who claims to have lost 99 BTC which were not moved to the Good Samaritan's address:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2oo72b/victim_100_bitcoins_stolen_from_blockchaininfo/

The destination address got two other inputs; perhaps other ursers?
https://blockchain.info/address/1M77fUCzQrmY8jHRRgpzDVPAK5eQ31bwxZ

Your address seems to be one of those colected by the "Good Samaritan" and moved here
https://blockchain.info/address/1Ha7DNXbiUi5DozhZjtDDveciamb6uQZbR
He promised to give them back as soon as the owners can prove tha they are theirs.
Check previous messages in this thread.

The Good Samaritan collected ~216 BTC from some 200--250 compromised Blockchain.info addresses, the last one ~4 hours ago:

https://blockchain.info/address/1Ha7DNXbiUi5DozhZjtDDveciamb6uQZbR

Are those the only ones? (I saw a claim on reddit, without any evidence, that the total losses were higher. Any source for that?)

Is that the new Blockchain.info logo?

December 24, 23:59:59 is the deadline to enter deeds into Santa's good kid / bad kid database.

Indeed, "on January 27, 2014".  I hadn't noticed that.

About "why can't we see the USMS transferring Draper's 2'000 BTC lot":

According to the Mirror venture, which is funded in part by Draper, he entered the auction through their syndicate.  As explained above, a syndicate would probably submit several bids for 2000+3000=5000 BTC, and perhaps one for 2000 or 3000 BTC

That would help, but may not remove the risk entirely.  The malicious reseller may order a batch of real Trezors and send fake malicious Trezors to the clients, with the same serial numbers.

Perhaps one can devise some secure hanshake that that the Trezor could do with the SatoshiLabs server to prove that it is legit.  It would have to be something hard to emulate by a fake Trezor, even one that used parts from a real Trezor.

They seized ~30'000 from SilkRoad servers, and were able to auction them right away.  And seized another 144'000 from Ross's personal laptotp, so they are still disputing whether they are his or SilkRoad's; but both sides agreed to auction them now and continue disputing over the money.

Yes, that's the idea. AFAIK, you lose the deposit onnly if your bid is called and you default. The USMS doesn't want people to bid first and then scramble to find the money later.  AFAIK, to enter a syndicate you must send the full value of your bid to the organizers in advance -- for that reason.

If that 2000 BTC lot was held because of a default, the bidder may have miscalculated the time neded for a wire transfer, or may have been counting on some expected revenue that did not materialize in time.  Who knows.

Perhaps blockchain.info (if people still trusts them) can create new addresses for the affected users, post the old-new map, and the "good samaritan" can then transfer the amounts there.

There is no date set, but they still have some 94'000 BTC to auction. From the way they split the coins today, it seems that they are planning another 50'000 BTC auction next, and then presumably one for the final 44'000.

yeah, of course.  Sorry.  I got my coffee, EEG starting to show some activity now.

If one bidder does not pay by the due date (today 2:00pm EST) , they will have to notify the highest bidder who was left out of the first round, and obviously give him a couple of days to wire in the payment. 

So it may be that one of the bidders who won a 2000 BTC block defaulted, and the USMS has transferred the 48 000 BTC to those who paid, and didn't bother to split off the 2000 BTC chunk yet, waiting for the next bidder to pay.

By the rules, each bid form could bid for any number of 2000 BTC 'A' blocks, all at the same price, and any number of 3000 BTC 'B' blocks, all at the same price.   So, a syndicate that wanted to place bids for many blocks, all at different prices, would have to submit a number of forms, each for 1 'A' block and 1 'B' block.  It seems likely that the USMS would want to make a separate transfer for each form received, even if two forms were submitted by the same person.  So that may explain why there are nine 5000 BTC chunks.

From the USMS announcement:
They seem to use a 0.001 0.0501 BTC or 0.05 BTC fee. So, someone who bought 3000 BTC will get 1999.999 1999.959 and 0.001 0.0501 will go to the miners.

Note that only 48'000 of the 50'000 BTC were split (into nine 5000 BTC chunks and one 3000 BTC chunk).   That is why the leftover of the 100'000 BTC is 52'000 BTC.

Does that mean that the USMS thought that the bids were too low? Or that one of the bidders defaulted on the payment?

EDIT: fixed fee amount

A fake Trezor can, for example imitate the real one but generate only weak keys (say, from among 2^30 possible pairs rather than 2^160).  Then the thief needs only monitor the blockchain until enough coins have been stored in those addresses, which he has precomputed.  Then he just moves the coins to his own addresses, all at once.

Note that the thief does not need to know who got the fake Trezors, and the user has no practical way of checking whether the keys are strong.

How many coins people may keep in those fake Trezors? That is the expected payoff of this attack. How much does it cost to make a fake Trezor with malicious bootloader?

EDIT: grammar