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by William Fleurant
13 Comments

739,033 unique computers running BitCoin.

It’s 2012, and epic 2011 was totally being epic 2011.

I recorded 739,033 unique computer IP addresses using the BitCoin Currency over a 3 month period. Plus, According to MTGOX:

49.9883/BTC (BitCoins) is trading@ $6.45978/USD.

That’s $323 for 50 BitCoins. Happy-Happy Joy-Joy.  The Google Maps KML file is also quite rich. If you want to check that one out (and have the GPU/CPU power) contact me:

Snippet of a side project of mine, introducing my independent findings on the Worldwide usage of BitCoin. Data collected on a machine -not- running BitCoin. Read the WiKi to find out how. But, I would start by grepping the source code.

If you enjoyed this choppy post, send some btc to the QR above.

BitCoin is a currency. This currency is so different because anybody can use an Internet connected computer to generate BitCoins. It can be exchanged for other currency, commodities, and a variety of services. Similarly, it can be withdrawn or exchanged like all other currencies. But instead of a leather wallet or plastic credit card, BitCoin uses an encrypted digital wallet. This protected wallet can conduct transactions from a smartphone [3], an ATM machine [4] and of course a personal computer.

This process of using ones computer to generate a BitCoin is in fact called mining. Mining for BitCoins independently is very competitive. It absolutely requires expensive hardware for the ability to gain a substantial return on investment. An initial investment of almost three thousand dollars should generate about 3½/BTC per day. [5]

Snippet of Hipster Data Collection section.

I chose to use GeoIP’s open source release. An additional program was needed to look-up each IP address or Hostname. I found a program called created by a marketing company MaxMind. [14]. I edited the code in GeoIP*/test/test-14.c file to output in a comma-separated valued format, rather than a tabular format.

— test-14.c.orig      2011-10-30 23:28:55.396216967 -0400

+++ test-14.c   2011-10-30 23:29:05.186203262 -0400

@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@

if (gir != NULL) {

ret = GeoIP_range_by_ip(gi, (const char *) host);

time_zone = GeoIP_time_zone_by_country_and_region(gir->country_code, gir->region);

–      printf(“%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\t%f\t%f\t%d\t%d\t%s\t%s\t%s\n”, host,

+      printf(“%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%f,%f,%d,%d,%s,%s,%s\n”, host,

_mk_NA(gir->country_code),

_mk_NA(gir->region),

_mk_NA(GeoIP_region_name_by_code(gir->country_code, gir->region)),

In addition to using the free city lookup database, I was also able to utilize a CPAN Perl module to plot waypoints of GPS via their GeoIP API.  Note that before running the code GeoIP city lookup provides, recompiling the source with an output according to their API is required for their bash wrapper (output to ./.libs/ with all other compiled C)

Start a WireShark filter to match ‘dst.port == 53’ and if on a Unix (Apple) or Linux computer the command ‘tcpdump –nqi eth0 udp port 53’ will suffice. Then, all of the captured DNS requests answered will be observed. In this 3 month case, there was a substantial number of IP Addresses which are read by the GeoIP application which in return are sent out for further resolution of origin via the computers default Domain Name Server and finally passed back through GeoIP for a database match and are attributed with such matching variables which are written in CSV format and saved to file.  The reversing of IP address to location took over 24 hours. I created a bash script to monitor this step.

#!/bin/bash

total=744893 ; scale=3 ; sleep=60

file=”/root/bitcoin_sorted04112011.csv”

while true ; do

clear

p=$(wc -l $file | awk ‘{print $1}’)

t=$((${total} – ${p}))

d=$(echo “scale=$scale; $total / $t” | bc)

f=$(tail -n2 $file | head -n1 | cut -d”,” -f 1,11)

s=$((${o}-${t}))

echo “Remaining : $t”

echo “Previous  : $o”

if [ $s -eq 0 ] ; then s=”SERVFAIL” ; fi

echo “Speed     : $s”

echo “Completion: $d%”

echo “Locaton   : $f”

o=$t

sleep $sleep

done

…snip

I recorded the data from the centralized server and logged all connecting, and disconnecting clients.  The data was recorded non-stop.  I used a variety of programming languages to capture, parse and manipulate the data. Ruby, Perl, Sed, Awk, PHP, GPSBabel, GEPLOT, Excel and Microsoft Word programs were utilized. I first used MySQL Database but that was not necessary with the programs and scripts I utilized and wrote afterwards.  It took 45 hours to produce this document with a total of 7,542,601 observations [20].

Thanks for your über focus. It’s Dangerous to go alone! Take this.

[Fig 3.] Plot of 739,033 unique BitCoin Instances. Map created with and Map software Image-WorldMap [18] (Author of software: Leon Brocard) Licensed as Free Software (GNU GPLv2)


 

 

Results

See Supplementary Material at http://is.gd/onxXil for raw data obtained from this study. (Note: IP_ADDRESS field has been censored for privacy, but is available upon request)

Declaration of Testable Hypotheses

  • BitCoin popularity originating from countries where there are physical hardware limitations due to high import tax or other fiscal and or availability issues will be among least reported.
    • False – 195 countries were documented.

 

  • BitCoin will be popular at Universities.
    • True – 385 U.S. Colleges are participating in BitCoin. Based on an estimated 1,735 institutions of higher education [15], I conclude more than ¼ of the Universities in the U.S.A. are actively mining for BitCoin.

 

  • BitCoin participants in countries with high-censorship laws will be unable to participate.
    • True. Among the 56 countries that were unaccounted for were

Libya, Turkmenistan and North Korea.

ANTARCTICA	BONAIRE	BOUVET ISLAND	BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY	CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
COOK ISLANDS	DJIBOUTI	EQUATORIAL GUINEA	ERITREA	FALKLAND ISLANDS (MALVINAS)
NORTH KOREA	LESOTHO	LIBERIA	LIBYA MARSHALL ISLANDS
NIGER	NORFOLK ISLAND	PALAU	PITCAIRN	SAINT BARTHÉLEMY
SIERRA LEONE	SINT MAARTEN (DUTCH PART)	SOLOMON ISLANDS	SOMALIA	SOUTH GEORGIA AND THE SOUTH SANDWICH ISLANDS
TOKELAU	TURKMENISTAN TUVALU	WALLIS AND FUTUNA	WESTERN SAHARA
CHAD	CHRISTMAS ISLAND	COCOS (KEELING) ISLANDS	COMOROS	CONGO
FRENCH SOUTHERN TERRITORIES	GUINEA-BISSAU	HEARD ISLAND AND MCDONALD ISLANDS	HOLY SEE (VATICAN CITY STATE)	KIRIBATI
MAURITANIA	MICRONESIA	MONTSERRAT	MYANMAR	NAURU
SAINT HELENA	SAINT MARTIN (FRENCH PART)	SAINT PIERRE AND MIQUELON	SAMOA	SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE
SOUTH SUDAN	SVALBARD AND JAN MAYEN	SWAZILAND	TIMOR-LESTE

[fig.4] List of countries not using BitCoin.

 

  • BitCoin usage in the USA will be more popular on east and west coast due to many new technologies emerging from these coastal areas such as Massachusetts, New York and California.
    • Inconclusive: The graphed data indicates various “Popular” states, which predicted to in fact be 4 of the 10 top in this list. Arguable hypothesis, immature reasoning for anticipated results.

 

  • BitCoin data once collected will show serious implications on publishing IP Addresses.
    • Releasing any information in regards to government networks is beyond this discourse.  There are additional implications due to recent targeted BitCoin attacks on computer networks which essentially steal wallet-Addresses. [28]
More BitCoin propaganda :)


by William Fleurant
11 Comments

Board favors smoke-free campus

I actually though of tagging this post with [war]. Yikes..

AMHERST – Smoking on campus at the University of Massachusetts could go the way of the discontinued Pontiacs if the Faculty Senate adopts a proposal next week to make the campus smoke free beginning July 1, 2013.

UMass spokesman Daniel J. Fitzgibbons said the Health Council supported a draft proposal March 11. The council will present the report to the Faculty Senate April 7.  http://www.masslive.com/springfield/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-33/130155601577850.xml&coll=1


by William Fleurant
14 Comments

Free Amazon Shipping

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

I suppose this lengthy post is about what everyone does at Umass — Write! Did you ever stare at the screen, attempting to explain the psychology of Parisians who stormed the Bastille? (Joyeux Quatorze Juillet!) Could you find nothing else to write about Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun? Who writes for the sake of writing? What motivates you to think? Could you write for Gather? Do you Reddit

What drives people to work for the sake of self purpose?

  

Thats all, like my fortune read:

"To go too far is as bad as to fall short." — Confucius

 

Below you can import the 2010 Fall semester calendar. 

      (Also, the Google Calendar ID: 164m784dp114klc0oda5nodm9g@group.calendar.google.com)

Dont forget about the Free year of Amazon "Prime" Free shipping available to anyone with an .edu email address. 

 


by William Fleurant
1 Comment

Microsoft Live Mesh @ UMB

Cloud storage is becoming quite a trending topic within the NFS community. There are quite a few companies that offer a wide variety of services. Generally, end-user services include basic file synchronization, back-up and shared-access of your files. Linux, Mac and Windows platforms are typically compatible. Encryption of your files is generally practiced server side and always during transmission, with the exception of Apple Mobile ME and Linux Ubuntu ONE.

Microsoft Live Mesh will encrypt your files during transmission, but not server side. Regardless, head on over to http://www.mesh.com and download the windows client if you are running windows. If you are running open Linux or BSD-like variant (OS X), you can also upload/download files via mesh.com active desktop. Anyways — without opening cloud desktop suite chatter, which in the near future HP+Palm, Blackberry and Google OS are absolutely pursuing, the active desktop appears to mimics other remote server-standalone virtualized web-desktops. 

 

 

Log in with UMass Boston credentials, and start synchronizing your documents. Also, by installing the live mesh application the end-user can allow remote desktop access over HTTP+SSL if there are multiple devices added to the ring. Mesh will even work if the mobile machine is roaming on a network with strict UDP/SSL+TLS access control lists. Neat eh? 

 

Sending and receiving your data without a secure socket connection is vulnerable to any peer snooping the air/wire. 

 

If you prefer an open source, and company to house your data, follow the refferal link below. SpiderOAK will give anyone with an .edu TLD email address 50% off at the billing page. Mac, Linux and Windows supported and trusted. 

 

https://spideroak.com/download/referral/f9534573220954ecead86d824d1d96c1

 

Why SpiderOAK?


by William Fleurant
4 Comments

Scott Borg’s agenda

If you listen to NPR as much as the next, you may have realized the significant slant on this afternoons on-point: Cyber Warfare, with Tom Ashbrook on WBUR.

Most of the callers and comments on the air floored me to blog. I wanted to torch some of the comments left on Tom’s blog, I laughed. My outrage roots from “expert” Scott Borg’s (“director and chief economist at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit“) claim that all of the recent and theoretical cyber-security attacks on the pentagon, google, nuke plants are because of a flaw that fundamentally: sits between the monitor and the seat. (heh) Mr. Borg is obtuse to many facts. His sources are from CNET, HAK5 or from the Pentagon. With respect, the Pentagon has obviously shared less information about the lost laptops than the next.

Mr. Borg continued to instigate fear and global cyber warfare propaganda. Advocating a federal “identification” protocol for the internet is only interesting if you are reading 1984 or you are the CEO of USCCU.
The public should at least be informed of the defensive theorem. It hit me when Mr. Borg attempted to divulge security flaws in the United States IT infrastructure. His examples of actual vulnerabilities can simply be classified as: UNAMERICAN

What would a nuclear security engineer have to say…?

The segment on cyber-attacks, and the vulnerability of power plants to these attacks, was inaccurate, a fact which I tried to clarify when I called in. The gentleman who spoke to my point right afterwards skirted around the fact that a physical presence from an attacker, as well as intimate knowledge of the plant itself, is entirely necessary. The level of knowledge required would be next-to-impossible for someone to obtain, as it would consist of both physical, electrical, and software design documentation. The alarmist viewpoints presented by the gentleman are, as an engineer of the systems, offensive to me.

I will not, however, speak against an improvement of physical security at power generation facilities. However, that diverges from the topic of your show.

As a listener, I think it is necessary to clarify these points. It makes me question the dependability of the “experts” that editorialize on the topics of your show. For example, it is in Scott Borg’s best interests, as a security consultant, to produce public concern and fear of these nearly impossible, and highly improbable events. In other words, it’s his job to produce the “worst case scenarios” and present them not only as possible, but probable.
Posted by Nicholas, on December 8th, 2008 at 11:06 am UTC


by William Fleurant
3 Comments

Namaste & Winter Vacation

listening to The Sun Will Shine http://www.machine475.com/index.php

Hello World, a programmers first words… Enlightenment at that very split second, for me.

I am writing because the mind is a muscle, and like all muscles they become weak if not exercised. The effort by lifting weights and running hard build a strong body and heart. But How do you stretch and strengthen your mind and soul? What motivates you to think outside the 9 to 5?

When we work the same muscles and think the same paths, we stop building extra muscle and paths because they are not required. We can add ankle weights when we run, that would confuse the muscle to compensate and grow.

Yoga is the only total body workout, look at the links, enjoy the music. Namaste, Happy Holidays.

the sun will shine through,
on you on me on the snow,
winter vacation.

Links:

http://www.machine475.com/
http://enlightenupthefilm.com/


by William Fleurant
Comments Off on bummer summer

bummer summer

Not much beach weather going this summer vacation. Mr. Jackson unfortunately suffered a creepy death… War is still so bizarre to me… US “combat troops” withdrew from Iraq, after the Iran Tweet color Revolution, and were transplanted into Afghanistan making it the Largest Marine offensive since Vietnam

The RIAA has been sueing a Harvard university student for $1,000,000/USD for downloading…. a single MP3 file.

The police state of America is getting SO bad its been integrated with micro-blogging website Twitter… Its not the police that is concerning, perhaps its the people twitter-tattle-tailing on others fare hiking on the MBTA

twitter.com/wfleurant *PLUG*

Above is my Twitter. It’s more of a RSS News feed. Info Warrior style.. The script covers hundreds of websites and tweets according to the active tabloid of the month..

sorta looks like this…

%feh.twitter = $remove($remove($remove($strip($2-,burc),$chr(40)),$chr(41)),$chr(9))
%half.twitter = $remove($gettok(%feh.twitter,2,58),//)
%front.twitter = $remove(%feh.twitter,http:// $+ %half.twitter $+ )
var %i = 1
while http:// !isin $ [ $+ [ %i ] ] {
inc %i
}

%cap.twitter = $ [ $+ [ %i ] ]
%wicked.twitter = $strip($upper($1),burc) $remove(%feh.twitter,$ [ $+ [ %i ] ] $+ )

while $gettok(%tw33t,%t,44) != $null {

if $gettok(%tw33t,%t,44) isin $1- {
inc %tweet.level
;echo -a (Twit:wildcard::)
;/tinyurl %cap.twitter %wicked.twitter
goto end

:end

%cap.twitter = $remove($remove($strip(%cap.twitter,burc),$chr(40)),$chr(41))
.timer 1 $calc(%tweet.timer * 10) /tinyurl %cap.twitter $remove($remove(%front.twitter,%cap.twitter),http://)

titlebar (Tweet level %tweet.level $+ ) (Avian= $+ %avian.h5n1 $+ )
…BORING

Last but no means least, the Palm Pre was released in June.. A 600Mhz ARM CPU Architect running WebOS Linux…With Synergy! With Root#

More on the break….

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