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Apparently it's the library's turn to pay a fine.
Libraries in St Louis have been bought to a standstill after computers in all the city's libraries were infected with ransomware, a particularly virulent form of computer virus used to extort money from victims.
Hackers are demanding $35,000 (£28,000) to restore the system after the cyberattack, which affected 700 computers across the Missouri city's 16 public libraries. The hackers demanded the money in electronic currency bitcoin, but, as CNN reports, the authority has refused to pay for a code that would unlock the machines.
As a result, the library authority has said it will wipe its entire computer system and rebuild it from scratch, a solution that may take weeks.
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Ransomware Attack Paralyses St Louis Libraries as Hackers Demand Bitcoins
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Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Wednesday January 25 2017, @12:44PM
> By the way, I don't understand why bitcoins can't be tracked.
They can be tracked. In fact they can be tracked by anybody on earth, as the ledger is public (visible to all). You can look at the bitcoin blockchain right now and see exactly from which wallet to which wallet every single bitcoin flows.
Hell, there are tons of sites to show you visually. Here is one with a global map of (near) real time transactions: http://bitcointicker.co/transactions/ [bitcointicker.co]
The problem is associating that wallet (Which is just a public key in essence) with the private key (the bit stored on your computer in your wallet.dat or equivalent), and from there, associating the wallet with an actual human. That is where it gets tricky.
Bitcoins power is decoupling the identity of the holder from the account, and from there giving anonymity to users and public disclosure to the transactions so everyone can verify the ledger.