Slashdot Mirror
Millions of Dogecoin Stolen Over Christmas
Kenseilon writes "The Verge reports that millions of Dogecoins — an alternative cryptocurrency — was stolen after the service DogeWallet was hacked. DogeWallet worked like a bank account for the currency, and the attackers modified it to make sure all transactions ended up in a wallet of their choice. This latest incident is just one in the long (and growing) list of problems that cryptocurrencies are currently facing. It brings to mind the incident where bitcoin exchange service GBL vanished and took a modest amount of Bitcoins with them. While not a similar case, it highlights the difficulties with trusting service provides in this market."
Who cares?
Dogecoin was originally a satire "cryptocurrency" anyway, the fact that it got "hacked" just prove the point even more.
Such theft. Much mad. Very suprise. Wow.
// TODO: Witty Signature
Didn't the same thing just happen with credit cards and target. Seems to be an infosec problem not a cryptocurrency problem.
Wow. Doge Much Value! Very respect.
A joke from the beginning
They shoot unicorns, don't they?
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
Sounds like the electronic equivalent of printing your account number on all the deposit slips at the kiosk inside the bank.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
At least this time it's of a currency worth very, very little, so losses aren't that great and there are even more great minds thinking about how to solve cryptocurrency security problems. The end-user human will always be the weakest link, and the trust that the end user places on others always the most vulnerable part.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I have no idea why people deposit their stuff in these online accounts. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for doing this.
I mean sure, you have to send your coins to an exchange if you're going to be trading but a wallet is something you can keep and secure yourself on your own system. Dogewallet was useless other than being a giant target.
And as usual, people who trust their Crypto Currency to a web based service (especially one with such a short history to it, and no clearly defined security practices) end up getting their shit stolen. Really now, if you want your crypto coins (be they BTC LTC or whatever) safe keep them in a private wallet and encrypt it, don't load your fortunes onto some website, then complain when they get hacked.
This is kind of like carrying around a giant wad of cash in your pocket and then being mad when someone mugs you, keep a small amount of 'working cash' readily available, and keep the rest of it in a safe place. The same logic that you'd use with real money should apply to virtual money.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Successful troll is successful
This is what happens when you trust one wallet.
You can more or less trust banks because they are so big that you can assume your money is there.
Crypto-currencies aren't even in their baby-crawls yet, they just fell out the vag of greed itself.
It will be a long time before these currencies have the install-base for them to be reliable, and more to the point, more trustworthy as larger sites get established.
Until then, even your online wallet is a gamble.
This latest incident is just one in the long (and growing) list of problems that cryptocurrencies are currently facing.
FUD!
Tip: HOST YOUR OWN WALLET!
It's digital currency and one of it's greatest features is that nobody can take it away from you. Trust online repositories and wallets as un-secure for the next few years and keep as little as possible in them.
Transfer coin to off-line storage with backups and you're golden.
I still can't tell how much of this is a joke and how much is real...
What's next? Dolancoin, featuring a crudely drawn homicidal duck? Frycoin, urging people to quietly and quickly accept the "money"?
Regardless, any of these is basically the same as Monopoly money. Next, we'll have reports of how a truckload of monopoly money got stolen. It'll be just as relevant, if not more, since something happened to someone (said truck was stolen).
I wouldn't expect to see a report like this if someone had managed to steal 15 bitcoins.
FDIC Insured
Sure, let's not report on real cryptos such as Peercoin or NXT.. instead, let's focus on a cheap knockoff. Seems legit.
I can't wait until this *coin fad goes away. All I ever think about it is "a fool and his money are soon parted" whenever I hear somebody talking about how great it is and how I should mine it too. And now we're ending up with $RANDOMNAMEcoin, which are more or less just clones of one another. If nobody drank the koolaid then this currency would be worth the paper it's printed on. Sorry, it really isn't worth the money it's printed on and it really isn't untraceable...
1) Create Dogecoin miner client.
2) Get other people to install miner
3) Client also secretly finds Bitcoin wallets and sends them to me.
4) Profit? Yes profit!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some found a need to steal DOGE. It is tradeable and actually worth something... this only bolsters that conclusion..
I think Dogecoin is a joke and was intended as such but with all the alt coins I stay confused...
I am mining Bells. I thought they were more fun anyway...
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Maybe I lack "the vision thing", but as someone who uses PayPal and another similar service to accept payments, I don't see them being driven out of business anytime soon by Bitcoin.
I'm currently paying a couple of percent on each transaction, which seems fair for the service my customers and I are receiving. There are lots of alternative services in the payment sphere (I've used two others in the past), and the fact that they all have similar fees and offer similar services makes me think there's already enough competition to have driven the fees down to what's fair for the service they provide.
I think my customers like having an intermediary like PayPal to go to if there is a problem. Also, from this merchant's point of view, the fact that the value of Bitcoin swings so wildly makes it an unattractive basis for payment. So, although Bitcoin may put a little pressure on PayPal and its ilk - which isn't all bad - I can't see it ever replacing them completely. If anything, PayPal, et al, may just eventually begin transferring Bitcoin as a new service. You can bet they're already at least thinking about it.
Long live Kittycoin!
Banks are hacked and abused as well, but this is never published. What happened to Dodgecoin once is probably peanuts when compared to what happens to credit card companies every year.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Keep movin', movin', movin',
Though banks are disapprovin',
Keep them Doges movin' Rawhide!
Don't try to understand 'em,
Just mine and throw and grab 'em,
Soon we'll be living high and wide.
Boy my heart's calculatin'
Fast money will be waitin', be waiting at the end of my ride.
This is not a problem unique to cryptocurrencies. This particular incident is one that can be chocked up to kids not using php properly. Bad website implementation is not the fault of any cryptocurrency, be it one for pomeranians, or human beings.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
How could you forget cat turds?
Not really, the problem is that it drastically devalues the currency to have thousands of competing currencies. It made it a major PITA in the early colonial days as each colony had it's own currency and even banks had their own.
Except that: if you look closely:
- bitcoin is the most popular one. it's actually used for buy/selling only.
- litecoin is what comes as a distant second.
From that point onward, almost any other alt-coins is a very minor player, which is more or less only used for speculation, and only traded on exchanges. You have to convert them into more major coins (like Bitcoin or Litecoin) before being able to do anything remotely useful with them.
Same as in your colonial example:
Alternate currencies abound, scams are everywhere, but overall people settle around a few stable solutions.
I honestly don't see any of the current attempts (BitCoin Included) being a stable or viable long term digital underground currency.
Slow doen these things take time.
What we need now is payment processors accepting bitcoins on behalf of merchant and paying local currencies to the merchant: like coinbase, bitpay, coinjar, etc. (other will come using local currencies as time passes).
What we need is merchant slowly starting to accept bitcoins (well technically accepting EUR, USD or whatever the local currency is, but with payment processed in bitcoins thanks to payment processors. But you basically got the idea). On-line merchant that decide to add "bitcoin" (coinbase, bitpay and co) in addition to the other payment option they have (bank-to-bank SEPA transfers, PayPal, Google Wallet, Amazon, etc.)
As bitcoin gains presence, it will get more and more used.
As more transaction are done for such buying/selling, the flow of currency will increase.
Thus on-line commerces will start to have a bigger impact on the value than speculation on exchange platforms.
That will make bitcoins' price dominated by their use rather than pure speculation.
Eventually the bitcoin exchange rate will look less like a roller-coaster and more like most fiat currencies.
But all this takes time. It won't happen overnight, It won't probably happens before a couple of years.
Same with the other coins: some will gain acceptance eventually (Litecoin, very probably. I would like Primecoin to get some mainstream action. Peercoin seem to have stayed for longs period of time), others will always remain the play thing of speculators and scammer (Doge is very likely to remain such).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well, to be fair, it's pretty hard to do much trading of crypto-coins at all if you're just going to keep them in your private wallet all the time.
But not impossible. And actually been done.
There are services like localbitcoins or bitcoin.de, which aren't exchanges per se, but help bitcoin users find each other and trade bitcoin for fiat money.
localbitcoins has an optional escrow services (but you're still allowed to do private-wallet-to-private-wallet transaction if you want).
bitcoin.de is only exclusively wallet-to-wallet.
There are also people trading via forums, via chatrooms, etc.
The only current problem with wallet-to-wallet trading, is the *current* impossibility to implement some level of consumer protection.
(hence the optionnal escrow service of localbitcoins).
But that is simply due to current implementation, it's not a technical limitation.
With things like multi sig...
Maybe I haven't thought everything through well enough, but I'm not quite sure I understand why we couldn't just *require* all transactions to be pushed or pulled from each person's private wallets -- with all exchange sites simply acting as middle-men issuing the various transaction requests? Couldn't you use something akin to PGP with a public/private key pair involved, protecting each request happening between two anonymous parties, but skipping the whole step of making someone place funds on a wallet managed by the site so withdrawal or deposit actions happen on those?
this is exactly the kind of stuff that could be set-up with a multi-sig extension - the typical 2-out-of-3 scheme.
Indeed, it something similar to localbitcoins, but with the escrow implemented with signature as you suggest. Instead of "funding the transaction" (sending the coins to an intermediate escrow) like currently implemented, the escrow simply acts as a 3rd key in a 2-out-of-3 scheme. The coins never actually reach the escrow, you don't need to trust the escrow to forward the money. The only thing you'ld need is to ask the escrow to work as a referee when there's a dispute between the 2 other sides of the transaction.
Currently needed improvements:
- add support for 2-out-of-3. The current bitcoin protocol supports it in its scripting language. But it is not implemented in the nice point'n'click Qt interface. The only way to broadcast such transaction would be to use low-level API. What would be needed are a couple of dialogs to handle the transaction in the Qt interface (and maybe a simpler command in the command line interface).
- create such an escrow (Or persuade localbitcoins to move their escrow to this newer technology).
Other alternative:
look at the recently featured slashdot article about multi-sig.
It was used the other way around. Coins are deposited on an on-line wallet. But end-user has an extra key which can be used to invalidate potentially fraudulent transactions and evacuate the coins in case of problems.
Such methods could be used to insure additional protection on online exchange site (like mtgox, btc-e, cryptsy).
the interest of such setup is that the trading platform can perform trades on your behalf (buy/sell orders) while you're offline by having a set of keys, all the while you have an extra set of keys to react in case things start to go crazy.
That's one of the problems with this whole thing, IMO, and I hope better solutions are developed for it soon. I can't really trade my LTC, for example, until I move it to a wallet sitting on one of the web sites where it can be bought and sold. Being in the USA, my options for that are very limited if I want ways to convert it into US dollars. I've used www.litetree.com since it seems to be one of my only viable options, and as far as I can tell -- it's operated by a guy who is trying to do everything above-board and by the books.
Even so, the last time there was a big spike in LTC value and I wanted to sell a number of my coins? His site was d
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Actually, there was millions of debit cards too. As well as target red dot (not sure of name) cards stolen, some of which are directly connected to bank accounts or debit cards.
You painting a picture where the 40 million stolen cards don't matter. Its not like the thieves stole the cards and are all the sudden creating money out of thin air. That's not how it works, people and businesses are losing real money, and the thieves are earning lots of it.
This has already happened.
There are so many alt-coins, that few people actually take time to check the source code. Or even compile their own.
some are just in for mining and/or for speculation.
They quickly download a pre-built exe of whatever is the latest minor trend du jour.
Unscrupulous persons HAVE packaged malware in some of these installers.
And you've seen regularily complains poping up on bitcointalk forums of users who got their bitcoin/litecoin/peercoin and a few other wallets emptied.
Thus currently you can soft people into three categories:
- regular people who only use old established coins. by the time some software has reached, it has stand the test of time, has been checked multiple times, etc.
(I'm doing that)
- bleeding edge people who are still interested into getting the latest piece of software (in the hope that some will take-off and bring massive money). they rely heavily on virtualisation to separate all dubious pieces of software in separate compartment. (so malware can't find much other wallet files, and can only key-log password typed within the virtual machine - only for the 1-2 software isolated into that instance)
(I'm doing that too - even if I only use a couple of established coins, I'm putting them all in separate compartment, just for the sake of security)
- blind idiots which install watever they find (they are the same people who used to have 25 different bars on internet explorer, and their home computer has probably spitted spam for the last 15 years at least, as part of several different huge botnets).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
among thieves?
I think a hack involving crypto-currencies would be the perfect next subject for Underhanded C Code Contest (the current one involves social networks with "friend distance" calculator in an imaginary "ObsessBook").
And I'm almost expecting that the winning entry for such a subject will be under the form of a link to an old commit on the git of some popular Joke-Coin.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
...this is a doge dog world.
I mean, cryptocurrencies aren't real money right?
Otherwise they'd be regulated and taxed.
Therefore nothing was stolen.
Now, for my next trick I will prove that black is white and get myself killed at the next railroad crossing.
Shitcoin is an extreme gamble that doesn't really do anything useful for the average person. Even the drug lords found out the hard way that it's not immune to the same issues surrounding traditional transactions.
India's central bank acknowledges Dogecoin as virtual currency and the cyptocurrency is hacked on the same day? Interesting :) I wonder which of it happened first.
You really think that the governments around the world will allow it? It takes a LOT of power out of the hands that like to control people.
It simply brings back the level of simplicity that cash transaction have (but makes them online. But just like cash, it's basically direct people-to-people transfers.)
Or put it into another way, the kind of simplification that SEPA has brought in Europe (strongly simplified Bank-to-bank transfers, with much lower fee [sometime even free], and relatively shorter delay [well, still in the order of days, but that's already better than internationnal wire transfers], and total freedom of choice: as long as your bank and the bank of your merchant both support SEPA you can still do transaction together, without needing to involve a specific mantadory 3rd party actor like paypal)
Overall, bitcoin is like the strange offspring of a forbiden love between SEPA and Cash, but targeting the whole internet, and born as a perfect nemesis for PayPal (and other such 3rd parties with a big control over transactions).
So in some part of the world, the power isn't that much new, it's just a newer way to exercise the power you used to have.
(Okay there are other part of the world where your are automatically considered a criminal if you use cash to pay anything more expensive than a chocolate bar. These other part of the world are going to HATE bitcoins)
Also *NOT allowing* bitcoin isn't something easily done. It's not as if the government simply needs to ask its police to raid the local branch of "Bitcoin and Brothers Inc.". There's no central authority. The whole protocol is distributed. There's no single point to choke to stop it functioning. The only legal leverage would be for a country to forbid its merchant to accept payment with it (like Thailand).
But trying to prevent users (using their own wallet, and/or trading person-in-person, and/or buying goods on foreign websites) that is going to be the kind of whack-a-mole game that the media loby already tried playing against pirates.
(expect bitcoin being used over Tor in those countries).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]