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Hackers Allege Mt. Gox Still Controls "Stolen" Bitcoins
The Verge reports that "Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox lost $400 million worth of bitcoins in February. Its management said the amount was stolen after hackers exploited a transaction bug to divert the funds, but some of Mt. Gox's users are not so sure, suggesting instead that the exchange's owners pocketed the cash. Now, facing silence from those owners about the fate of the money and the methods by which 6 percent of all of the Bitcoin in the world could have been stolen, a group of hackers claims it has broken into the bankrupted Bitcoin exchange's network to get answers. ... Forbes reports that the group gained access to the personal blog and Reddit account of Mark Karpeles, Mt. Gox's CEO. The hackers used the platforms to post a message that claimed Karpeles still had access to some of the bitcoins that he'd reported stolen. In support of the claim, they uploaded a series of files that included a spreadsheet of more than a million trades, Karpeles' home addresses, and a screenshot purportedly confirming the hackers' access to the data." (The Forbes article on which the Verge report is based.)
I tend to think it has to be an inside job, that is being run by the folks pretty high up. Any kind of really really basic accounting and inventory control should have uncovered more coins going out than the transaction register indicates. This transaction malleability issue supposedly went on for months.
Even a badly run business should have detected a problem like the time frame of weeks, whenever their next month end comes up. It would have been impossible to balance the books, unless someone was simply not doing them or cooking them.
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Given how easily it would be to get away with the theft of anonymous cryptocurrency, I am surprised there aren't far more 'hacks' where exchanges rob all they can from their customers then close up shop. I know it has happened in China on much smaller scales, and I'm sure it will happen many more times, the question is who can you possibly trust with something that can be so easily disappeared.
Reddit users have verified via decompilation that the dump file includes a wallet-stealing executable. The executable attempts to send the wallet to a hard-coded IP address, whose ISP has been notified of this.
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This happened a few years ago and is why I have nothing to do with Bitcoin - I lost quite a few coins, then decided it was too risky to be involved with until the exchange problem was figured out.
I am not sure why this is not more widely known, but there you go. I am not sure there is a solution to this problem.. without the involvement of traditional government.
..don't panic
I love how people are attacking libertarians over this. Bitcoins are not designed to be a 'safe' currency. It's like cash. There is no reason this should be a problem for those who understand when, where, and how to use it. I wouldn't maintain more in a Bitcoin wallet than I would store in my real wallet. For me that would probably be a few thousand in US currency.
Like cash Bitcoins have a downside. Bitcoins fluctuate in value. US dollars loose value over time. It's also not that easy to steal. Practice good security hygiene and there is little to no risk. Don't walk down back alleys with $2,000 in your pocket and you'll probably be fine. Apply the security updates for your OS and don't run Microsoft Windows / Mac OS X and you'll probably be fine.
Anonymity has value- but Bitcoins isn't totally anonymous. Nobody who gets Bitcoins is claiming it is. It's at best difficult to trace due to the current lack of people or facilities to do this. That doesn't mean it or a derived currency won't eventually have such anonymous or pseudo-anonymous features. Zerocoin is a proposed extension to the Bitcoin payment network that adds anonymity to Bitcoin payments. It's here. It exists. It might need some peer review, some beta testing, and people to formally implement it, but we're not that far off.
Are Bitcoins a libertarians wet dream? Almost... but it's not 100% perfect yet and I'd be skeptical of anybody claiming it is.
For all it's faults it's still more transparent then the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Peoples Bank of China or the Russian Goznak. "Because when the entire world is a credit-fueled ponzi scheme, these are the kind of numbers that matter". http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-11/matter-stunning-perspective-china-money-creation-blows-us-and-japan-out-water
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The reporter probably doesn't understand what's going on at all.
1) the leaked data contains not only the mt.gox DB dump (which seems to be legit) but also the TibanneBackOffice.exe binary which is actualy malware which steals bitcoin wallets. So i wouldn't trust the hackers at all, they are scammers. See http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoi... for more details.
2) The article/the hackers claim that the mt.gox database dump shows that mt.gox should be in control of over 900k bitcoins and that it is an evidence that mt.gox is lying. Well it is evidence that the article/hackers don't understand anything. From the start, mt.gox is saying that because of a transaction malevability bug, their ballances in DB and their balances on their actual accounts were ouf of sync. This is the reason they didn't notice sooner. Their DB was showing everything was ok but in reality, their money was silently siphoned out of their accounts.
3) Karpeles (mt.gox owner) is probably staing silent because his lawayers told him so. Nothing unusual here.
And I thought people that ran kitten.scr.exe were idiots.
What a bunch of morons. I checked, Windows says I only have kitten.scr so I'm safe.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
There's something I don't understand. If they 'stole' the coins, they can't really trade them can they? Anyone I mean. As I understand every single transaction is tracked, so you can't really spend them without people knowing so right? Ok so you can hide your identity and whatnot, but wouldn't people know the instant these BTC are back on the market?
"Bitcoins are like cash."
I really REALLY wish people would stop saying this.
They're not. The way the Bitcoin system works, they're more like commodities.
Granted, some businesses have allowed you to pay for things with said fractional commodities, but still. At some point, an actual cash value has to be determined before you can actually SPEND them.
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I called it.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
I reserve the right to call "backsies" if the current story proves false.
People who claim modern currency is baseless don't understand economics. Modern currency is backed by *everything*. Gold, Real Estate, Cars, Businesses. Everything that is used for collateral against a loan becomes backing for our currency. Crypto-currency is based on scarcity like gold was, and thus makes a terrible general purpose currency because it's vulnerable to manipulations, and rigidity that make it easy for bankers and insiders rob everyone. The modern form of debt backed currency is the most flexible and least vulnerable to manipulation there has ever been. Our advanced modern currency has weathered the pressures of the current economic stresses extremely well, and dramatically lessened the impact of the current problems with our economy. If you want to look at what things where like with a scarcity backed currency, look at the economics of the US pre 1913. It's full of horror stories like the panic of 1893 and 1873, and even some events where bankers conspired to not give out loans to anyone to buy up houses cheap and re-sell them for a profit once they all agreed to give out mortgages again.
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The good thing about bitcoin is that you can track where the coins went. The id's of all the Mt. Box accounts will all be known when they end up going to court. If they stole money or coins we will know.
Your basic grasp of economics and history has no place here.
absolutely NOT. wow - and how long have you been employed by the fed I wonder - bringing out the 'magic of 1913'? is that you janet? modern currency as a fiat currency is not 'backed' by anything other than what it says on the bills - legal tender.. that the currency is acceptable as a means of payment in the eyes of the court system and hence, the structural society in which we live (with the implicit backing of the powers that be within that system). the fact that hard assets are used as collateral to make loans in a given currency in NO way means that said currency is then 'backed by those hard assets'. that is simply a line of recourse to a default on the CREDIT extended - nothing to do with the currency used as a medium of exchange. I could just as easily lend someone bitcoins using their car as collateral. jeez. and to say that debt-backed currency is even relatively immune to manipulation is incredible - especially when we are living in an age where it stares people in the face every day under the guise of 'quantitative easing', rate-rigging, and lawsuits involving currency manipulation. i'm not saying cryptocurrency is a solution, but damn. before you start throwing barbs under the guise of being the one who understands economics, you should make sure you know what you're talking about, and/or put down the propaganda talking points.
You've misunderstood what currency backing means.
A something-backed currency means that there have to be a _fixed_ amount of physical entity somewhere in the possession of whoever decides to give out the currency. This is not the case with the current fiat. Sure it can be exchanged for all those things you mentioned but it's backed by none of them, some central bankers could agree to create ex nihilo enough money to give a billion USD to every bank account in the world. If you then reason that a dollar is backed by cars then either there would be a huge surplus of cars somewhere to allow this to happen, or someone managed to multiply the current global carpool a millionfold overnight.
Why do you think nothing of value is being created? Work is work and LSD doesnt make nor distribute itself. I only wish it did. Goods that are bought and sold in bitcoin arent "nothing". That it is now in a speculative bubble only confirms the fact that well, all money is subject to that posibility. The cool thing about bitcoin is that nobody saves anyone from bad investments, nobody forces anyone to use it, nobody prints more to finance idiotic projects that give no value back but instead cost the next generation their credit.
I like the damned thing. I only wish the whole fucking world would switch to something like it.
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