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438 Bitcoins Worth Nearly $3.5 Million Stolen From Exchange In India, CSO Accused (indiatimes.com)
William Robinson shares a report from The Economic Times: Nearly 438 bitcoins, worth nearly $3.5 million, were stolen from a top exchange firm in India in what is being billed as the biggest cryptocurrency theft in the country so far. The exchange, which has over two hundred thousand users across the country, found that all the bitcoins that were stored offline had vanished. It was later found that the private keys -- the password that is kept by the company and is stored offline -- were leaked online, leading to the hack. The company tried to trace the hackers, but found that all the data logs of the affected wallets had been erased, leaving no trails about where the bitcoins were transferred. Coinsecure, a Delhi-based cryptocurrency exchange, is accusing its CSO, Amitabh Saxena, of siphoning off the money from the firm's wallet. The exchange is urging the government to seize Saxena's passport, fearing that he may leave the country.
The error was not giving half of them to the police.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What an appropriate name!
Bitcoin - so much more secure than the banks! Hahaha! Stored in da cloud, blockchain, blah blah blah.
Right.
Bitcoin - the joke is on its users.
As I said in my previous comment...
Isn't this why so many people trust Bitcoin "security" to begin with? So you can trace any and all transactions back to the inception of the bitcoins used themselves?
Seems rather pointless if you can just delete any records. Sounds more like a scam every time I read something new about them.
I tend to rant.
Not one day passes without a multi-million dollar Bitcoin heist
It supposed to be secured
But the 'security' itself turns out to be the fatal flaw
"leaving no trails about where the bitcoins were transferred."
I am not sure they even know how blockchains work..
What is this? 2013?
Are (any) fiat-currency and (any) cryptocurrency really equivalent, as cryptocurrency fans claim?
For example, US Dollar and Bitcoin are really equals?
Value/validity/authorization of US dollar is provided/guaranteed by US Government (and in-turn whole US Public)!
Also, not to mention, US Dollars in any US Bank is insured by US Government!
What authorization/guarantee/insurance is behind Bitcoin? Nothing!
Sorry but that is the end of discussion then!
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?
If so-called cryptocurrencies are really money; isn't people issuing their own money, illegal already, in all countries?
If so then, why they are still not banned in all countries?
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!
You're supposed to keep your bitcoin in your own wallet. If you're against banks but keep your crypto at an exchange for more than the time needed to, you know, exchange it, that goes pretty much against the whole selling point. Even more, you just trust them blindly, because they're not regulated or part of an insurance scheme either.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
All the worth is only in their heads.
The heads of morons and criminals.
You couldn't buy a stick of gum with it in my house. (Neiter with Bitcoins, nor with Dollars or Euros.)
" ... leaving no trails about where the bitcoins were transferred."
I thought the whole POINT of Bitcoin was the distributed ledger. How can there not be a trail when the only way to transfer the coins is to publish the transfers as widely as possible?
You are possibly sarcastic playing on the bail out. Well done. If you are not sarcastic : bitcoin even with "overinflated" value is 1/100 of the bailout value, and so far as I can tell no fiduciary institution was insane enough to buy any relevant amount.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Not one day passes without a multi-million dollar Bitcoin heist
It supposed to be secured
The cryptography actually still works as it should. None of those heist is due to the cryptography being broken.
It's good old hacking of insecure servers, etc.
Not somebody managing to forge a signature on the blockchain and sign to himself a huge chunk of somebody else's money.
But the 'security' itself turns out to be the fatal flaw
Yes, its cryptocurrencies turning out to be fatal to themselves.
But the security of the cryptography isn't the culprit.
The problem arise from the base premises :
It's supposed to be a decentralized system for exchanging number, with no single central authority.
It's big advantage for people wanting free exchange with no obstruction (see controversies about Visa and Mastercard freezing some donation to wikileaks, back when bitcoin started to gain popularity). Same as with cash, nobody can prevent you to decide who you'll be handing a banknote.
But that means the obvious drawback that there's not simple central way to exerce regulations on all actors (unlike a bank in the banking system that needs to follow a ton of regulation before being able to itself a "Bank"). Same as with cash, nobody can warn you that the person whom you're handing a banknote is a crook.
You have to realize that, and as a consequence, remember to exercise brain before taking any decision, because the government cannot (by design for such decentralized scheme) protect you from your own stupidity.
If you're transferring BTCs (or whatever is the hipest cryptocurrency du jour) to some company that pretends to be an "exchange", you get no inherent safety guarantee regarding if the exchange platform follows at least a minimal required level of secure practice. Or if it's a complete scam all-together.
(Nobody can do that control for you, by design of the system).
It's a double edged sword.
If you want to have "muh freedomz" and be able to do whatever you want with your numbers, unrestrained by a central authority (no banks nor government involved),
then don't come crying when it turned out you're a sucker and gave out all your earnings to some scammer.
You asked for unrestained exchange possibility, assume its consequences now.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Isn't this why so many people trust Bitcoin "security" to begin with? So you can trace any and all transactions back to the inception of the bitcoins used themselves?
Seems rather pointless if you can just delete any records. Sounds more like a scam every time I read something new about them.
That is true on the blockchain itself, regarding exchange of BTC on the public bitcoin protocol.
You can't "delete" anything, unless the majority of the nodes on the network all agree together to roll back the blockchain. (Which happens every now or then when a newcomer cryptocurrency has a massive blunder leading to abuses and theft. Some time the whole network of that currency agree to roll back to before the blunder and use the new patched software).
But here, it's not the blockchain it self that got deletes.
There are transaction going from various owner to the wallet of the exchange platform,
there are other transaction going from the above mentioned exchange's wallet to other accounts.
But whatever happens on the exchange platform itself happens "behing closed doors" as long as the crypto-currency protocol is concerned.
An exchange platform might keep track of who exchanged which cryptocurrency with whom, so that at the end, when that user decide to withdraw their earnings, the platform knows how much to send from the platform's bitcoin wallet.
But that entirely internal book keeping.
And is completely left at how the platform feels appropriate.
For all the cryptocurrency protocols cares, it could also be a gambling platform.
Or some "artist's happenning" that completely burns and destroy bitcoins.
Here, hacker managed to get hold of the exchange platform server and persuade it to pay them out a good chunk of the BTCs held on the platform's bitcoin wallet, no matter what the server log held.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I am not sure they even know how blockchains work..
I am not sure you even know how a cryptocurrency exchange platform works.
Most keep their own internal journal of the exchange transaction happening on the platform itself.
They only accept payment on the blockchain to their platform's wallet when exchange's users pour money in,
and pay BTCs out on the blockchain out of their platform's wallet when the exchange's users decide to cash out.
But every exchange it self happens internally and has no visibility on the blockchain it self.
(There are exceptions, some exchange platform trying to run on ACTUAL blockchains themselves.
I think there was some Ethereum powered platform at some point)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
1849. Make Greed Great Again.
1) Create a 'cryptocurrency exchange'.
2) Get lots of suckers to place their hard-earner money there.
3) Steal half the coins and blame 'hackers' or some other fallguy.
4) Profit!
Perhaps a little off-topic, but I find it a little amusing that, now that Bitcoin is falling, we no longer get any stories about Bitcoin's current "value". Instead, we get stories like this indirectly informing us that, yes, the Bitcoin bubble is bursting.
For those of you who don't want to do the math, $3,500,000 for 438 coins works out to just under $8,000 per coin, less than half what a single Bitcoin was going for just 4 months ago.
"but found that all the data logs of the affected wallets had been erased, leaving no trails about where the bitcoins were transferred."
I thought the whole point of bitcoin was that every transfer ever is logged and public. You might not know who controls a wallet, but you know what every wallet is doing or owns.
You know what's ironic about this? The pushers of Bitcoin try to promote it as the next big thing where there's no government interference or main control body to control the currency but as soon as a large batch of coins are stolen, they're out begging for the government to do something because something went wrong.
They could have been faked.
In fact, if you fake a fake currency, did anything happen, other than a chain of fiddling ones thumbs?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --