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Hacker Uses Exploit To Generate Verge Cryptocurrency Out of Thin Air (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: An unknown attacker has exploited a bug in the Verge cryptocurrency network code to mine Verge coins at a very rapid pace and generate funds almost out of thin air. The Verge development team is preparing a hard-fork of the entire cryptocurrency code to fix the issue and revert the blockchain to a previous state before the attack to neutralize the hacker's gains. The attack took place yesterday, and initially users thought it was a over "51% attack," an attack where a malicious actor takes control over the more than half of the network nodes, giving himself the power to forge transactions. Nonetheless, users who later looked into the suspicious network activity eventually tracked down what happened, revealing that a mysterious attacker had mined Verge coins at a near impossible speed of 1,560 Verge coins (XVG) per second, the equivalent of $78/s. The malicious mining lasted only three hours, according to the Verge team. According to users who tracked the illegally mined funds on the Verge blockchain said the hacker appears to have made around 15.6 million Verge coins, which is around $780,000.
Hard-fork to rollback? Of it goes the can never forget a transaction, apparently it looks like it useful to forget, can't see why they make it a feature.
... That is the general idea.
Stupid people making other people rich. Cryptocurrencies is the dumbest thing ever. I have $0 in the real world and a virtual coin gives me REAL money for doing nothing.
How is this an attack? Sounds like somebody smart figured out how to mine very quickly.
If he tries to use the funds he will bring the value down to a fraction of that. It is sad that other people will suffer as well.
As opposed to what?
If the attacker would have created coins at a reasonable rate the attack may have never been detected.
If he'd kept the mining down to a high-but-not-suspicious level he could've mined for weeks and sold his Verge for USD nd walked away with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars by summer and maybe millions by Christmas.
Hmm, maybe he or one of is buddies did and this is his way of "shutting the whole exploit down."
We will probably never know.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
According to users who tracked the illegally mined funds on the Verge blockchain
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
So transactions in a blockchain are NOT secure and are NOT permanent. If a blockchain can be AND IS forked from a previous point in time, then doesn't that defeat all security and reliability in the blockchain currency?
The Verge development team is preparing a hard-fork of the entire cryptocurrency code to fix the issue and revert the blockchain to a previous state before the attack to neutralize the hacker's gains.
And to neutralize all the legit (if any) transactions, by the way, creating money out of thin air for those that spent it, and destroying it for those that received it.
Remember this if you are investing real money in Bitcoin, or any other well-known cryptocurrency: Some few people have the power to revert all operations back and make your money vanish, as proven here.
As opposed to the usual way of generating them out of thin air...
That basically is the way these things are generated. Sure, usually it takes more time, but that is the only thing that went wrong here. Also describes well what these "coins" are worth: Absolutely nothing. That is, unless you find a sucker that is willing to pay for them.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
With bitcoin, now with this case you see how inane it is "the hacker appears to have made around 15.6 million Verge coins, which is around $780,000." Too bad we don't have a symbol for "supposed dollars "
That's how everyone with a currency creates it: governments (after the gold standard was dropped) and cryptocurrency alike. Even before the gold standard was dropped people just 'agreed' gold had value. If you had an lode of that stuff in your mountains then good for you.
> generate funds almost out of thin air.
Thin air? Cryptocurrencies require a lot of electricity so that's thick dirty air! Ironic that what he did was 'eco'!!!! Satsoshi Musk would be proud. :-)
According to users who tracked the illegally mined funds on the Verge blockchain...
Is not what is "legal" for a blockchain what the majority of nodes maintaining the chain say is legal? If someone broadcast a "weird" transaction on the network but all of the other nodes accepted it and agreed to include it in the blockchain, isn't by definition the transaction done and considered "legal" by the network? After all the rules of the network are what the network says they are; without this concept it wouldn't really be a non centralized, distributed system.
because if so, what difference does it make how they're mined? And if not, shouldn't you be able to stop the invalid coins?
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screwing with it for it's own sake. Hell, he might have already made all his money, decided anything more would be pointless, and did this again, for the hell of it.
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The mere fact that a hack could "create" cryptocurrency out of thin air is proof enough that all cryptocurrencies are thin air, or better yet, hot air. But what can I say when governments print money whenever they want? There used to be rules for how much money can a government print to balance the wealth in their country, but not anymore. The signal for financial chaos comes from the greatest of them all.
Which cryptocurrency isn't generated out of "Thin Air"?
Ken
I don't see how they can legitimately cap people's gains.
There are well-known not peer reviewed or peer reviewed and vulnerable altcoins out there. This is one of them. There's another popular one written in trinary instead of binary and then down-converted because its owners thought it would be cool. That's the level of stupid we're dealing with here but 99% of the community knows to stay away from sketchy side garbage like this.
I read through TFA and the submitted patch, but it's not actual clear what the flaw was. I figured /. would like to some full description rather than vague handwaving.
This whole Cryptocurrency exercise is so the Federal Reserve and its banks can, in the end, control all Cryptocurrency. Before the federal reserve and central banks there were upwards of 30000 different currencies in the USA. The same can be said for bitcoin. Any douche with some 'fork' and a computer can make a currency now.
No one is going to trust hundreds cryptocurrencies. People in the end are going to want a centralized crypto, whether they like it or not.
The nominal value of crypto-currency is a consensual agreement among it's users. The technology is the hand waving part that gives a pseudo-rationality to the shared delusion. At the point that enough people doubt the value it ceases to exist.
Nations that maintain currencies have resources to manage currency: courts, law enforcement, armies, laws, taxes, international agreements, the world wide banking system. And even with all that it's not always possible to keep things from going haywire.
Crypto-currency is dependent on a rule of law maintained by the same entities that are responsible for regular currency. It is intrinsically less secure then regular traditional money.
And you can take that to the bank.
Why is Snark Required?
This is great! We don't need guns to rob a bank anymore. So, what the fuck, let them take their 2nd Amendment.
More amusingly, this was the original attempt to fix it before deciding to fork
-static const int64 nMaxClockDrift = 2 * 60 * 60; // two hours // fifteen minutes
+static const int64 nMaxClockDrift = 2 * 15;
Because, yeah, 2 * 15 seconds is fifteen minutes.
They then had another go and just added "* 15" to increase the value, creating a weirdly obscure way to specify 7.5 minutes
+static const int64 nMaxClockDrift = 2 * 15 * 15;
Another way for the top of the pyramid to seize control of somebody else and their money.
Bitcoin and others have done this. and it shows one of many reasons why no crypto currency should be trusted... EVER!
So someone found the computer equivalent of a loophole in a law and exploited it to make money. Corporations do this crap every day with tax laws. Loopholes (sometimes) get closed, but they money doesn't get returned.
This sounds like people are upset that the "wrong guy" got the money that they wanted so they are going to invoke elementary school playground rules and yell "do over!"
What a bunch of crap.
That guy must've been wearing a "joker hat" - he wound up with nothing except the "joy" of seeing a bunch of people having to deal with cleaning up his mess, just like Gotham City's Joker.
A white hat would've reported the bug quietly. A black hat would've capitalized on it with a lot more "smarts" so he wouldn't walk away with nothing.
A grey hat would've done something in between, but he wouldn't have done it just for the lulz.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why do you think Satoshi Nakamoto is really hiding his identity, if Bitcoin is really such a great innovation?
He is just someone does not like media/fan attention?
Or, could it be really because Bitcoin (and all cryptocurrencies followed it) are actually Ponzi Schemes?
(So he knew very well that law enforcement would come after him sooner or later?!)
If so-called cryptocurrencies are really good innovation, why they attract so many criminals/criminal activity?
Could it really be because, all cryptocurrencies themselves are scams, and that is why they attract all kinds of criminals/criminal activity?
If so-called cryptocurrencies are really currency, why no company/store can use Bitcoin as currency anymore?
Because the price of Bitcoin proved to be extremely unstable to use as a currency?
Would the result be different, if Bitcoin replaced by any other "cryptocurrency"?
Aren't all work the same way?
Or, they are not actually virtual currency but virtual investment?
But, if they are actually investment, why we need/want them?
What would happen to world economy, if people invested in virtual investments, instead of real investments?
Or, all so-called cryptocurrencies are actually just a modified (made decentralized and paying variable interest) Ponzi Schemes?
(Price of cryptocurrencies would keep increasing in the long term (by their design), so it is equivalent of paying variable interest to all long term investors.)
As more and more people invest in cryptocurrencies, it will become harder and harder to ban their trading everywhere!
All cryptocurrencies need to be banned globally before it is too late!