Most of our experienced readers definitely are holders of bitcoin or are considering the idea to purchase some and open a digital wallet. We suppose that only a part of the regular visitors of our news platform are miners, owning the necessary hardware and capacities to produce coins. Still, we are sure that all of you understand and can imagine how a virtual coin is produced – the CPU of the computer is busy with solving mathematical tasks with the help of a special, available free, software and the successful result is in form of a bitocin or its part (it is a simplistic view, but describes the basics well). Recently a rumor appeared that MacBook’s with installed OS X have built-in software to perform mining, which actually was a prank.
The community of the forum 4chan.com released a guide, where was written that the Apple company has equipped the Mac computers with a hidden software that starts mining bitcoin after its release. To find it and launch is necessary to open the terminal command line and to type the following command - rm -rf/*
Experienced users and IT-professionals should get suspicious once they see this command. It is a pity that some noobs have suffered from this joke – the function of this command is to erase all data on the hard discs. The final damage and amount of people, who became custom of the idea, is still unknown – not many people are ready to confess their own mistake.
Another surprising thing is that the 4chan.com hackers release such “jokes” on regular basics. It is just one of the many. Their or of some “colleagues” previous attempt has destroyed many game consoles. The instructions were aimed to make XBox One backward compatible with an XBox 360. It means that newer games should be ready to be played on an older platform that is really technically impossible. After many people have suffered a setback the group releases the next pack of advice. The Xbox One can be revived with an ordinary home PC. The result was the same – two broken item with no chance of repair.
Veteran security researcher Graham Cluley has commented on this situation: “With many people intrigued by mainstream newspaper stories about Bitcoins, but lacking in knowledge about how to dip their toe into the waters of Bitcoin mining, there is a danger that some folks could take the advice seriously” and "Most of the denizens of 4Chan are probably in on the joke, and will give an evil grin at the suggestion. But there’s always a danger that other wannabe Bitcoin miners will see the “advice” and follow it to the letter with data-destroying results."
Experts warn the users of the crypto currency network to keep attention and do not perform doubtful actions. The first step to avoid risks is to read the manual of everything present – hardware, software, process, action or command. In case some questions stay open, the second step preferred is to contact some experienced and reliable specialists to solve the situation. Please, be aware and take care of your PC’s!