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{{short description|American computer programmer}}{{for|the Mississippi judge|Virgil A. Griffith}}

factoids

| birth_place = Birmingham, Alabama, United States| alma_mater = California Institute of Technology

• 63 months imprisonment (2022)
• $100,000 fineWEB, April 12, 2022, U.S. Citizen Who Conspired to Assist North Korea in Evading Sanctions Sentenced to Over Five Years and Fined $100,000,weblink April 25, 2022, U.S. Department of Justice, en, }}| known_for = Ethereum development, Tor2web, WikiScanner

International Emergency Economic Powers Act>Conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. § 1705)}}Virgil Griffith (born 1983), is an American programmer. He worked extensively on the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, designed the Tor2web proxy along with Aaron Swartz, and created the Wikipedia indexing tool WikiScanner. He has published papers on artificial lifeNEWS, John Borland, August 14, 2007, See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign, Wired (magazine), Wired,weblink 2007-08-14, and integrated information theory.WEB, Griffith, Virgil, Virgil Griffith's articles on arXiv,weblink 14 December 2014, arXiv, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York, List of papers in a search result., Griffith was arrested in 2019 and in 2021 pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate U.S. laws relating to money laundering using cryptocurrency and sanctions related to North Korea.NEWS, Fanelli, Virginia, Crypto Guru Pleads Guilty to Advising North Korea on Blockchain Technology,weblink 28 September 2021, Wall Street Journal, 27 September 2021, On April 12, 2022, Griffith was sentenced to 63 months imprisonment for assisting North Korea with evading sanctions and is currently in a federal low-security prison in Pennsylvania.NEWS,weblink Cryptocurrency expert jailed for advising North Korea how to evade sanctions, ABC News, April 13, 2022, www.abc.net.au,

Life

Griffith was born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up in nearby Tuscaloosa. He graduated from the Alabama School of Math and Science in 2002,WEB,weblink September 3, 2007, Alumnus Virgil Griffith Creates and Releases Wikipedia Scanner, 2007-09-03,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070928161709weblink">weblink 2007-09-28, dead, and then attended the University of Alabama, studying cognitive science. He transferred to Indiana University Bloomington in 2004, but returned to graduate cum laude from Alabama in August 2007.See David Virgil Griffith in WEB, 2007,weblink Commencement, The University of Alabama, 29 August 2007, 16 February 2008,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20080216004358weblink">weblink dead, In 2008, he was a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute.NEWS,weblink Virgil Griffith, Internet Man of Mystery, Heffernan, James, 2008-11-21, The New York Times, 2019-12-12, en-US, 0362-4331, WEB,weblink SF I Profile: Virgil Griffith, Santa Fe Institute, March 27, 2008, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20091120204144weblink">weblink November 20, 2009, In 2014 Griffith received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology under Christof KochNEWS,weblink Scanner Tracks Who's Changing What on Wikipedia, August 16, 2007, NPR, in computation and neural systemsWEB,weblink CNS Graduate Students, California Institute of Technology Computation and Neural Systems, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20131211211341weblink">weblink 2013-12-11, 2013-12-06, with funding from the U.S. Departments of Energy and Homeland Security.WEB, 2015-09-07, Alumni Profile {{!, Department of Energy|url=https://www.krellinst.org/csgf/alumni/profile?n=griffith2009|access-date=2022-01-21|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150907072256weblink|archive-date=2015-09-07}} He has been a research scientist at the Ethereum Foundation since 2016.WEB,weblink Developer faces prison time for giving blockchain talk in North Korea, Lee, Timothy B., 2019-12-02, Ars Technica, en-us, 2019-12-12, At the time of his arrest in 2019, Griffith was a resident of Singapore and was allegedly investigating the possibility of renouncing his U.S. citizenship.NEWS,weblink He Gave a Cryptocurrency Talk in North Korea. The U.S. Arrested Him., Ransom, Jan, 2019-12-02, The New York Times, 2019-12-12, en-US, 0362-4331, WEB,weblink Prosecutors: Noted American coder taught North Korea how to evade sanctions with cryptocurrency, USA Today, November 29, 2019,

Computer career

Griffith has given talks at the hacker conferences Interz0ne, PhreakNIC, and HOPE.At Interz0ne 1 in 2002, he met Billy Hoffman, a Georgia Tech student, who had discovered a security flaw in the campus magnetic ID card system called "BuzzCard". He and Hoffman collaborated to study the flaw and attempted to give a talk about it at Interz0ne 2 in April 2003. A few hours before the presentation, he and Hoffman were served with a cease and desist order from corporate lawyers acting for Blackboard Inc.NEWS,weblink At Blackboard's Request, Judge Prevents Students From Discussing Security of Debit-Card System, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 April 2003, April 7, 2007, Andrea L., Foster, Wayback Machine, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070407194432weblink">weblink WEB,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20030420232857weblink">weblink dead, April 20, 2003, Temporary Restraining Order against Hoffman and Griffith, April 14, 2003, Two days later, it was followed by a lawsuit alleging that they had stolen trade secrets and violated both the Digital Millennium Copyright ActNEWS,weblink Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA, Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 2006, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20060215220604weblink">weblink February 15, 2006, WEB, The copyright cops strike again,weblink Salon, 5 October 2018, 15 April 2003, and the Economic Espionage Act.NEWS,weblinkweblink" title="archive.today/20120526070125weblink">weblink dead, 26 May 2012, Blackboard Gets Gag Order Against Smart-Card Hackers, Washington Post, 17 April 2003, Anitha Reddy, The lawsuit was settled later that year.NEWS, Heffernan, Virginia, 2008-11-21, Internet Man of Mystery, en-US, The New York Times,weblink live, 2021-07-31,weblink 2021-01-29, 0362-4331, On August 14, 2007, Griffith released a software utility, WikiScanner, that tracked Wikipedia article edits from unregistered accounts back to their originating IP addresses and identified the corporations or organizations to which they belonged.NEWS,weblink Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits', BBC Online, BBC News, 15 August 2007, Jonathan Fildes, Griffith described his mission in developing WikiScanner as "to create minor public-relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike."NEWS,weblink The Medium - Virgil Griffith, Internet Man of Mystery, Heffernan, Virginia, The New York Times, November 23, 2008, In 2008, together with Aaron Swartz, Griffith designed the Tor2web proxy.MAGAZINE, New Service Makes Tor Anonymized Content Available to All, Wired, 12 December 2008,weblink wired.com, 22 February 2014, Zetter, Kim, WEB, tor2web brings anonymous Tor sites to the "regular" web, 15 December 2008,weblink arstechnica.com, 22 February 2014, In 2016, he was fired from the Tor team for attempting to sell de-anonymized Tor2web traffic.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}WEB,weblink [tor-project] Launching Ethics Guidelines, May 12, 2016, WEB,weblink [tor-project] Launching Ethics Guidelines, Virgil, Griffith, May 12, 2016, lists.torproject.or, On Ethereum, Griffith writes Ethereum "is an unprecedented arena for playing cooperative games", and "enables powerful economic vehicles we don't yet understand", by bringing cooperative game theory into new domains.WEB, Ethereum is game-changing technology, literally, May 2019,weblink 30 June 2019, As of 2019 Griffith's homepage stated that he worked for the Ethereum Foundation.

Inaugural Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference

In mid 2018, Griffith was one of a number of international cryptocurrency experts invited to attend a conference in Pyongyang, North Korea.WEB, BBC World Service - The Lazarus Heist, 7. Crypto Comrades, April 24, 2023,weblink 6 January 2024, BBC, en-GB, His invitation to the conference and his entry to North Korea was facilitated by a US businessman, Christopher Emms, and North Korean political activist Alejandro Cao de Benós. Griffith agreed to participate, despite being denied application for special validation he required to attend by the US State Department, and the resulting need for him to take an unusual route to enter the country.NEWS, O'Carroll, Chad, Virgil Griffith ignored warnings on crypto dealings with North Korea, FBI says,weblink August 9, 2023, NK News, 6 January 2024, Once the eight foreign delegates arrived in Pyongyang, their passports were confiscated following the discovery by North Korean security staff of a home-made pornographic video on one of the delegates' laptops.WEB, Guest, Peter, 24 November 2022, Inside the great Pyongyang crypto caper,weblink GQ Magazine, 6 January 2024, Over five initial days of tours including local businesses and a foreign language school that had little or no connection to cryptocurrency, the conference itself began at Pyongyang's Sci-Tech Complex, which the delegates observed to contain technology largely obsolete in the rest of the world. The speakers were presented with brief instructions on topics approved for discussion which appeared to have been sourced from the internet, was already in the public domain, and so seemed insufficient to justify holding a conference. Resorting to improvisation, the delegates spoke impromptu about what they had been told to discuss, to an audience comprising officials who appeared not to understand and some of whom slept through the presentations. Shortly afterwards, the delegates were bussed to the airport, their passports were returned, and they flew home.

Prosecution

Since approximately 2010, North Korea is believed to have funded many of its weapons programs and the luxury lifestyles of its leadership through cybercriminal activities including the Lazarus Group.WEB, North Korea–linked Lazarus Group responsible for nearly 20% of crypto losses—more than $300 million worth—in 2023,weblink 2023-12-15, Fortune Crypto, en, NEWS, 2022-04-15, North Korean hackers target gamers in $615m crypto heist - US, en-GB, BBC News,weblink 2022-04-15, Pursuant to the IEEPA and Executive Order 13466, U.S. persons are prohibited from exporting any goods, services or technology to North Korea without a license from the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and it is illegal to conspire with U.S. persons to do the same.WEB, Two European Citizens Charged for Conspiring with a U.S. Citizen to Assist North Korea in Evading U.S. Sanctions, 25 April 2022,weblink Office of Public Affairs, US Department of Justice, 6 January 2024, On his return to the US, Griffith was alleged to have discussed at the conference means through which North Korea could use cryptocurrency to evade economic sanctionsNEWS, Zheng, Steve, U.S. authorities arrest Ethereum research scientist Virgil Griffith for allegedly assisting North Korea in evading sanctions,weblink November 28, 2019, Yahoo Finance, November 29, 2019, NEWS, Jan, Ransom, He Gave a Cryptocurrency Talk in North Korea. The U.S. Arrested Him.,weblink 2 December 2019, The New York Times, 2 December 2019, and, on November 28, 2019, he was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for providing "highly technical information to North Korea, knowing that this information could be used to help North Korea launder money and evade sanctions".WEB, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Arrest Of United States Citizen For Assisting North Korea In Evading Sanctions, 29 November 2019,weblink Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin initiated an online campaign for Griffith's release which, according to one source, could not garner many supporters.NEWS, Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin Signs 'Free Virgil Griffith' Petition Despite North Korea Meddling,weblink December 2, 2019, ibtimes.com, July 5, 2023, Subsequently, Griffith was imposed with a 10-year export privilege ban by The United States Department of Commerce.WEB, Sonderman, John, In the Matter of: Virgil Griffith, Inmate Number: 79038-112, FCI Allenwood Low, Federal Correctional Institution, P.O. Box 1000, White Deer, PA 17887; Order Denying Export Privileges,weblink US Department of Commerce, Office of Export Enforcement, 15 February 2024, 12 May 2023, On September 28, 2021, Griffith pleaded guilty at a hearing in which he expressed remorse. He was sentenced on April 12, 2022, to 63 months in prison, with 10 months already considered time served from his pre-trial detention.WEB, Margolin, James, Biase, Nicholas, 2021-09-27, United States Citizen Pleads Guilty To Conspiring To Assist North Korea In Evading Sanctions,weblink 2022-08-27, United States Department of Justice, US DoJ, en, WEB, Pearson, Jordan, Gault, Matthew, 2022-04-14, Ethereum Programmer Jailed for North Korea Trip Wanted to Clone Dogs, Become 'Crypto Hero',weblink 2022-05-09, Motherboard (website), Motherboard, en, From July 2022 he was in FCI Allenwood Low, a low-security federal prison in Pennsylvania.WEB,weblink Homepage of Virgil Griffith, August 11, 2022,weblink July 17, 2022, live, His personnal page now indicates he moved to FCI MILAN, a low security prison in Milan, Michigan.WEB,weblink Homepage of Virgil Griffith, February 20, 2024,weblink February 8, 2024, live,

Writing

• Virgil Griffith, Markus Jakobsson, 2005. weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070929093515weblink">Messin' with Texas: Deriving Mother's Maiden Names Using Public Records. {{ISBN|3-540-26223-7}}.
• Virgil Griffith, Larry S. Yaeger, 2005, MIT Press. Ideal Free Distribution in Agents with Evolved Neural Architectures. Indiana University School of Informatics and Department of Cognitive Science.
• Griffith is listed as one of the contributors (as "Virgil G") in Elonka Dunin (2006). The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes And Cryptograms. Carroll & Graf. {{ISBN|0-7867-1726-2}}.WEB,weblink Mammoth Book of Secret Code Puzzles: Acknowledgements, 2007-08-14,
• Two articles in Markus Jakobsson, Steven Myers (2007) Phishing and Counter-Measures: Understanding the Increasing Problem of Electronic Identity Theft. Wiley-Interscience. {{ISBN|0-471-78245-9}}.

See also

• King of the Nerds, a reality competition series on which Griffith was a contestant

References

{{Reflist|30em}}

External links

• arXiv publications

• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140213233154weblink">Binary Revolution webcast, 17 May 2005
• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070314193635weblink">Santa Fe Institute talk

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