I agree that ShapeShift's account has holes in it and the CEO seemed a little too willing to take Rovion at his word, but this rebuttal swings too far in the ot

I agree that ShapeShift's account has holes in it and the CEO seemed a little too willing to take Rovion at his word, but this rebuttal swings too far in the other direction. Some comments: > Red Flag #1. Bob is somehow able to connect with a hacker who has been hiding in their systems for some time. Actually, in the original article Rovion says "We contacted Bob." Which makes total sense -- if Rovion eg. had access to the email account of a ShapeShift employee, he would have seen the drama with Bob unfold and been able to contact him easily. > Red Flag #2. Rovion identifies Bob by his real life name "Bob," without a moment of hesitation. > Why on earth would Bob run a criminal business under his real name? If Rovion had access to some internal communications at ShapeShift, he would of course have "Bob"'s real name and no reason not to use it. > Red Flag #3. Bob chooses to sell his backdoor access to Rovion instead of using it himself. > Red Flag #4. Bob demands only 50 BTC for a backdoor. There's a lot more risk in stealing something yourself vs just providing information that can be used for theft. Letting someone else do the dirty work could definitely be a rational decision. And anyway, the hot wallet at no point after the original hack had 315BTC again, so the expected value of the second/third hacks were a lot lower. > Red Flag #6. Rovion is a moralistic individual who not only is a thief himself, but wants to see Bob, another thief from whom Rovion supposedly obtained credentials, severely punished It's not surprising to me that someone could adopt a moral framework that let them steal from poorly-secured foreign companies while still considering it wrong to steal from your own employer. > Orange Flag #9. Voorhees talks derisively about Bob's competence during the period of time when Bob was employed prior to the hack. Many countries, possibly including Switzerland, do have a very high standard you have to meet to fire someone with cause. This process could be especially delicate if Bob is of an ethnic or racial minority.