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Hacker Steals $8.4M Worth of Ethereum from Veritaseum Platform

kovacs_x 9y ago
Totally.Misleading.Headline!!! :( Hacker stole $8.4M worth of Veri coins, not Ethereum!!!
CoryG89 9y ago
Anyone have knowledge about this project? Looking at their website, the best I can tell is it's just a wallet? Looks pretty sketchy to me. http://veritas.veritaseum.com http://veritas.veritaseum.com
- StreamBright 9y ago
  No HTTPS? Amazing...
  - Crosseye_Jack 9y ago
    https://veritas.veritaseum.com https://veritas.veritaseum.com It’s just not enforced.
    - StreamBright 9y ago
      Yeah, that is bad because anybody can MITM you without difficulties.
    - suzzer99 9y ago
      You gotta be kidding me.
      - nagyf 9y ago
        Recommended browser plugin: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
        romanovcode 9y ago
        I have this plugin. Does nothing for this website.
- deleted 9y ago
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jpatokal 9y ago
the amount stolen was miniscule (less than 00.07%) although the dollar amount was quite material So this ICO has a valuation in the billions? Sounds quite fishy.
codewithcheese 9y ago
"In a post-mortem announcement, Middleton posted online today, the Veritaseum CEO said "the amount stolen was miniscule (less than 00.07%) although the dollar amount was quite material." what... 0.07% was worth $8.7 million. So the market cap is $12,428,571,428? Looked through most of the website and still have no idea what they do...
- deleted 9y ago
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- mtgx 9y ago
  That seems to be closer to Ethereum's value, not Veritaseum's market cap, which is "only" $350 million: https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/
- iraklism 9y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, he was comparing the stolen amount to the entire market cap of ETH (currently 19bil), to make it sound like it was a small amount.
- simias 9y ago
  I love how the "Downloads" page only tells you... how to buy veritaseum tokens. Apparently their team consists of 3 people too, only one of them being a dev. I'm trying very hard to figure out what they do exactly, apparently they create "Forensic Analysis and Valuation reports" and then sell them but instead of selling them for ETH or BTC they sell them in their own VERI tokens? I think there's more to it than that since the homepage says (in an image I've had to transcribe): "Veritaseum enables software-driven P2P capital markets without brokerages, banks or traditional exchanges". I wonder what percentage of their ICO "investors" really understood what they were pumping their money into. I also hope that some people are thoroughly documenting and archiving all these ICOs, it will make for a very interesting and I'm guessing entertaining post-mortem.
- dna_polymerase 9y ago
  The hacker stole their BS coin VERI, so he stole 0.07% of all VERI. I guess he can't even sell this crap coin anywhere, because why the fuck should anyone buy Veri now?
phyushin 9y ago
Title is also misleading ... They stole veri tokens and sold for eth not directly stealing any Eth... There was a story here last month that had a headache line like 'guy buys bit coin as 12$/coin is now worth millions' when what he actually did was sell those coins and use the money to start a company which he in turn sold for millions
- danmaz74 9y ago
  Were they really able to sell the stolen VERI for that amount of ETH? That would be really impressive...
  - joshschreuder 9y ago
    Not unless they sold before the news was out. Any mention of a hack is basically a fast track to flash crash in the cryptocurrency space.
  - daddyo 9y ago
    They were dumping it at 50% market price for ETH a few days ago. Don't know if they dumped it all or still sitting on a bit for when the market recovers.
Axsuul 9y ago
I have no idea what these guys do. They don't even take the time to explain it. The fact that these guys can run an ICO and call $8.7 million dollars miniscule is what's wrong with ICOs today. This just looks like another run-of-the-mill ICO backed by convoluted, cryptospeak that one can only pretend they know what they actually intend to build [2][3] Even the investors sound sketchy. Why does no one even challenge their business model? [1] I'm willing to bet this hack was an inside job. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887061.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887061.0 [2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By5WJsM3KjltOG https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By5WJsM3KjltOG [3] http://veritas.veritaseum.com/ http://veritas.veritaseum.com/
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- grafporno 9y ago
  > J. K. Rowling has said that Veritaserum "works best upon the unsuspecting, the vulnerable and those insufficiently skilled (in one way or another) to protect themselves against it... http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Veritaserum http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Veritaserum Hmmm.
  - richardknop 9y ago
    So even the name had a hidden scam reference in it. This seems so dodgy now.
    - cvsh 9y ago
      Or maybe they just mashed together the Latin word for 'truth' with 'Ethereum' and the etymology of Veritaserum is coincidentally covergent evolution
      - richardknop 9y ago
        Honestly you're probably right. They wouldn't be so brazen if they planned to steal money from the beginning. But nothing would surprise me in crypto anymore.
bhaak 9y ago
There are no details to this supposed hack and the used attack vector. The given information is so vague, this is indistinguishable from an exit scam. I hope they will come forward with more information but Veritaseum has always looked fishy, about 98% of the tokens are held by one address https://etherscan.io/token/0x8f3470A7388c05eE4e7AF3d01D8C722b0FF52374?#balances https://etherscan.io/token/0x8f3470A7388c05eE4e7AF3d01D8C722... and are not in free circulation.
- baraah 9y ago
  With the market cap beeing $360.000.000[0], and only 2% beeing in circulation, the value of the stolen tokens seems to be higher than the value of all coins in circulation. 2% of $360,000,000 are $7,200,000 and the hacker stole more than eight million. Or did I get this wrong somehow? [0] https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/
  - mkagenius 9y ago
    2% represent the $360M(market cap, in circulation). 100% is 50 times that, $18B (total supply), i.e. 100M tokens. What is stolen is 0.07% of 100M tokens which is 70K tokens, which is roughly $12M for current market price.
    - ConfucianNardin 9y ago
      According to the founder, the amount of stolen tokens is 37k: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887061.msg20355530#msg20355530 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887061.msg20355530#... That number also matches the number transferred (36,687.9382688909) to this wallet mentioned in the article: https://etherscan.io/address/0x3fff90bf314673194c3a265ed1c0aa68f59550c4#tokentxns https://etherscan.io/address/0x3fff90bf314673194c3a265ed1c0a.... Also, according to two other articles (linked from the bitcointalk thread), cite the value of the stolen as US$4.5M, not US$8.4M: http://www.altcointoday.com/ethereum-ico-veritaseum-suffers-4-5-million-hack/ http://www.altcointoday.com/ethereum-ico-veritaseum-suffers-... http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/07/24/yet-another-ethereum-ico-gets-hacked-veritaseum-loses-us4-5m/ http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/07/24/yet-another-ethereum-ico-g... Checking market charts around the time it happened (~00-08 July 24th), there's a significant dip in value, with the price going as low as US$~122: https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/#charts https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/#charts. At that rate the stolen tokens would be worth US$4.48M.
Oras 9y ago
>Middleton said that a hacker had somehow managed to steal VERI tokens during the ICO. Somehow? they couldn't even figure out how the hack happened? How convincing for their clients.
wodenokoto 9y ago
There seems to be a lot of etherum heist latwly, yet i dont see any shocks in the valuation of etherum. Does the market at large simply not care?
- CoryG89 9y ago
  It may not be crashing the value, but if we keep seeing hacks sustained at this frequency, it could slow or halt what might otherwise be continued growth.
  - rihegher 9y ago
    That is what we saw for bitcoin, however there is still more and more people buying into it.
  - uncle_d 9y ago
    ETH did not participate in the big spike of BTC back-end of last week and is now tracking down today.
- subroutine 9y ago
  This is what you would expect from a currency that is valued arbitrarily.
- taysic 9y ago
  I don't think they do. It's up 1000% or something since a year ago so it probably will take a while until people lose faith
Jabanga 9y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1giuft/quote_from_john_lyons_ceo_of_the_international/cakvvom/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1giuft/quote_from_...
- CoryG89 9y ago
  How is this related?
  - Jabanga 9y ago
    It's possible a group like this is the culprit. They have the means and motive. There were also massive DDOS attacks against BitcoinXT when it was picking up steam.
deleted 9y ago
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zkSNARK 9y ago
Why don't the ETH people actually put out some decent templates for smart ICO contracts. It seems nonsensical that their platform is supposedly a "world computer" designed to enable smart contracts when a vast majority of the created contracts fail because of being hacked. I invested in the ETH pre-sale and have done very well from it, but I have been selling a bit lately because I think someone else will come along with a system that open sources some really solidly vetted template contracts that have been thoroughly penetration tested by professionals.
- monort 9y ago
  Actually, the last multi-signature hack was because of the "decent" template contract produced by Ethereum developer.
  - zkSNARK 9y ago
    Meaning that the template itself was messed up? Did they hire professionals to attack it in a test scenario or did they just roll with it?
  - e79 9y ago
    I'm not so sure about that. Comparing the vulnerable source code to the original (which you can find here https://github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/blob/master/wallet/wallet.sol https://github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/blob/master/wallet/wall...) tells a totally different story. It looks like the vulnerable version tried to condense everything into a single contract (think class), when it had originally been split up into multiple contracts (think classes). The result was that functions that were originally initializers were no longer callable only once. Someone's refactor of the original code seems to be what lead to this issue. The vulnerable functions even started with "init" but were not actually initializers. Unless the original author also introduced the bug, I don't think it's fair to blame the original contract.
- slackingoff2017 9y ago
  It's not just the templates, Solidity is a terribly designed language. It reminds me of the original JavaScript before 10+ years of dedicated attempts to make it usable. With how many VM's we already have for Java and JavaScript it's idiotic that ETH designed their own language and eventually they will pay the price. This will probably be another coin that comes along without an idiotic language/VM
bhouston 9y ago
Is anyone making money on Ethereum in ways that are unrelated to just currency appreciation/speculation? Is Ethereum actually being used for something meaningful? (I guess in a way though Ethereum found its first killer app, pure currency speculation/appreciation. That gives it time and money to find something more useful.)
- lou1306 9y ago
  Well, if you consider "showing the world how buggy code can lead to financial disaster" a meaningful activity, then Ethereum is quickly becoming one of our proudest achievement.
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    too me everyday ethereum/bitcoin don't go to 0 that further proves the premise and makes the ecosystem stronger.
    - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
      I'm thinking that's what the Pets.com investors thought, too.
      - sharemywin 9y ago
        or google that's the risks of investing. I wouldn't sink my retirement in crypto.
- PMan74 9y ago
  > Is anyone making money on Ethereum in ways that are unrelated to just currency appreciation/speculation? Yeah, the hackers seems to be doing alright out of it.
  - ghthor 9y ago
    They aren't hackers, they are scammers and crackers. Hackers are builders and creators, they persevere in the face of improper tools by being creative.
verytrivial 9y ago
Oh, those naughty, naughty hackers. Oh, well, bad luck everyone. Do keep sending money. You'll soon be able to buy this bridge I'm selling.
FRex 9y ago
I'm really sorry to be that guy but.. again? Even the article says it's 4th time this month. What's going on?
- jbmorgado 9y ago
  What's going on is that this is just showing what any sane people already knew: any kind of commercial transaction must be backed up by actual real life laws or sooner or later one of the parts gets ripped off. Nobody can - or I would dare say, likes - to be watching is own back every single moment or their existence... but that's what crypto in general expects you to do.
  - PretzelPirate 9y ago
    I've been in crypto since early 2013 and I only check my wallet balance when I need to transfer coins to/from it. I may have opened my wallet 5 times in the past 4 years. The risk is increased when you don't control your own private key, if you do, the risk of losing your coins is very small.
  - FRex 9y ago
    Still, I'm not into crypto currencies at all and I only hear about Bitcoin (that's understandable) and Etherum (due to all these hacks, the first being the one that lead to ETC vs. ETH fork).
theklub 9y ago
I've thought about this after seeing a few ICO's. If you want to get super rich over night just start your own coin. I mean you could put in a legit effort and really try, still fail and make millions.
computerwizard 9y ago
Anyone make else make a bunch on scooping up cheap coins on etherdelta then selling them the next day?
huntie 9y ago
I don't really follow Ethereum, but from headlines on Hacker News I've learned that 1. Ethereum is difficult to work with 2. Its difficulty does not provide security This doesn't exactly inspire confidence in it. Some comments on this article imply that this was just a scam, so maybe Ethereum is secure. I think that a lot of people learn about things they don't care about via headlines, which may be damaging for Ethereum in its infancy.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  That would be true if it was steady-state, but there are a lot of people working things in the ecosystem that make it stronger.
  - jbmorgado 9y ago
    I guess you can say that Ethereum is also in the "strong and stable" category.
    - sharemywin 9y ago
      I wouldn't get ahead of ourselves.
- Nekorosu 9y ago
  Development on top of ethereum platform is in it's infancy. SQL injection attacks were as frequent when web development was young. I haven't checked it myself but I guess the current API is quite low level and doesn't include higher level abstractions to prevent this kind of attacks. Also there are no established development practices regarding security.
  - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
    But the difference is in the impact of security flaws. It's bad enough if someone steals a bunch of credit card numbers through SQL injection, but at least individuals are indemnified. With Ethereum, poof, it's gone forever.
ascendantlogic 9y ago
"Hacker". On the Ethereum subreddits a lot of people think the CEO is just cashing out and running.
- Taek 9y ago
  You can tell by how disinterested he seems to be in getting the money back. Anybody who really lost $8 million would be losing sleep, crying, and doing absolutely everything they could to get it back. This guy is not some billionaire, $8 million is a life changing amount for him. You don't just shrug off losing that kind of money. If I had invested in this project, I'd be in touch with the FBI.
razki 9y ago
"hack" 100% wasn't stolen just a marketing stunt.
bflesch 9y ago
This is a youtube video of by one of the founders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdQ3Q6FQYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdQ3Q6FQYE It is linked from the "prospect": https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By5WJsM3KjltOGJHYS1HT3Uyczg/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By5WJsM3KjltOGJHYS1HT3Uyczg... What kind of fools invest into this?
- vocatus_gate 9y ago
  A fool and his money are soon parted.
- Leader2light 9y ago
  ROFL, this guy should be in prison.
- untangle 9y ago
  So shocking it's funny – in the same vein that "American Psycho" was funny. The next step for ICO's will surely be a reality-TV show.
decentralised 9y ago
I'm calling shenanigans on this one, there are too many flags even for a cursory look at this story. 1) there is no code for this project that I was able to find; 2) blogger /personality CEO; 3) no report on the transactions (txHash) that would show the "theft"; 4) https://steemit.com/money/@financialcritic/analysis-of-the-veritaseum-scam https://steemit.com/money/@financialcritic/analysis-of-the-v... 5) https://steemit.com/veritaseum/@deobrands/is-veritaseum-a-scam https://steemit.com/veritaseum/@deobrands/is-veritaseum-a-sc... Finally, and this is subjective but still "feels" odd: The Veritaseum project is built on top of Bitcoin but it was Ether that was taken? If it was a smart contract then number 3 on the my list is even more important because we can replay it as many times as needed until we find the bug or exploit used, if any. PS: Ethereum = refers to the project, the network and the foundation name; Ether = currency issued by the Ethereum network.
Cshelton 9y ago
So I somewhat follow r/Ethereum and I remember seeing a good number of posts about Veritaseum... the general consensus is that it is a scam and has been the target of pump and dump schemes, like many other tokens. This sure does look like an inside job...surely they reported to whatever Government crime bureau in their jurisdiction? But given the terms of many of these sales, there are literally no repercussions if the "company" decides to just take the money and run. Buyer Beware. I think if anything, this whole ICO thing, as I've observed, just enlighten me about what we have consumer protection. It's not so the big corps and such won't scam people...they don't need to even try, people will time and time again, fuck themselves over. It's a sad reality. There was even a "Useless Ethereum Token" that did an ICO and raised something like $50k in a matter of days. Maybe the internet likes paying for jokes... regardless, I know countless people are dumping their next months rent on whatever ICO is happening that day with little regard to anything behind it. Disclaimer: I do believe in the Ethereum platform and am long in it. I also hold FunFair tokens, which I believe to be one of the first platforms that really takes off.
- fil_a_del_fee_a 9y ago
  I am very intrigued by this FunFair technology. Do you know when the next Token Event will be held? Or how I can get some? I read I can do development work for FunFair tokens, but don't see any more details.
  - Cshelton 9y ago
    They had a one time token offering. But yeah, the demo looks good and the CEO of it is well known in the gaming community, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jez_San https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jez_San
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- taysic 9y ago
  Why are you still long? At this rate it seems ethereum can be easily "disrupted" by something with a similar idea that provides more trust
daddyo 9y ago
Then the hacker proceeded in dumping the Veritaseum for 50% of market value. Now if you believe the price will bounce back, you can make a lot of profit on stolen coins. Immoral? Quite possibly. Against the law? Not this year.
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  I think it should be tested in court. Many ICOs are the textbook depictions of Ponzi schemes. When there is stealing, possibly self-stealing, involved the word "fraud" comes to mind.
  - daddyo 9y ago
    There are a few problems though. - Since Cryptocurrency is international, the US SEC does not have jurisdiction everywhere in the world. When there is millions on the line, you could just move to another country and try a scheme, or direct a foreign lackey to do it. - "The Federal Reserve simply does not have authority to supervise or regulate bitcoin in any way. To the best of my knowledge, there is no intersection at all in any way between Bitcoin and banks that the Federal Reserve has the ability to supervise and regulate." - To count for an exchange you have to issue shares. Not everybody does this. - Is cryptocurrency a token or a security? - How to distinguish between nouveau riche BTC millionaires trying out their luck with an ICO and a criminal organization using it to launder money? - Who is the single legal entity to target when the ICOs are distributed, and no single entity issues coins? - What to do with those that profit from future illegal activity, as a 3rd party? Right now there is a lot of obvious market manipulation going on. Whales banding together to influence and set prices. Pumping up interest with bots and 5-cent army trolls. Selling stolen coins for 50% of market value. Sharing upcoming announcements with a small group of investors, devs, and supporters, allowing them to speculate on insider knowledge. How do they prove I must have known about the stolen coins, when the news hasn't even broken yet and I already put out a buy order of 50% of the price in case of a flash crash?
  - davotoula 9y ago
    Not all ICOs are the same. Their parameters (for example is the token for utility or just for speculation) vary. There is a test in law that people can apply to try and tell whether a specific ICO is a security or not: the Howey test. http://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-howey-test.html http://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-howey...
Leader2light 9y ago
All these BS coins are going to destroy the entire idea. Not that it will be a great loss. :)
mcs_ 9y ago
The compiler should fire warnings to prevent injection like attacks. I understand solidity is a tool to program what to do with balance... A super set of rules that (at least) alerts the developers about dangerous operations will probably become a thing in the future.
bradjohnson 9y ago
I just want to take a second and complain about the twitchy monstrosity that is the floating nav bar. I scroll up to read text above and it covers up the text I'm currently reading so I have to scroll up twice and then down once to get rid of it. It's obnoxious and ugly and I wish it wasn't so popular. /rant

Totally.Misleading.Headline!!! :( Hacker stole $8.4M worth of Veri coins, not Ethereum!!!

Anyone have knowledge about this project? Looking at their website, the best I can tell is it's just a wallet? Looks pretty sketchy to me. http://veritas.veritaseum.com http://veritas.veritaseum.com

StreamBright 9y ago
No HTTPS? Amazing...
- Crosseye_Jack 9y ago
  https://veritas.veritaseum.com https://veritas.veritaseum.com It’s just not enforced.
  - StreamBright 9y ago
    Yeah, that is bad because anybody can MITM you without difficulties.
  - suzzer99 9y ago
    You gotta be kidding me.
    - nagyf 9y ago
      Recommended browser plugin: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
      - romanovcode 9y ago
        I have this plugin. Does nothing for this website.
deleted 9y ago
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jpatokal 9y ago

the amount stolen was miniscule (less than 00.07%) although the dollar amount was quite material So this ICO has a valuation in the billions? Sounds quite fishy.

codewithcheese 9y ago

"In a post-mortem announcement, Middleton posted online today, the Veritaseum CEO said "the amount stolen was miniscule (less than 00.07%) although the dollar amount was quite material." what... 0.07% was worth $8.7 million. So the market cap is $12,428,571,428? Looked through most of the website and still have no idea what they do...

deleted 9y ago
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mtgx 9y ago
That seems to be closer to Ethereum's value, not Veritaseum's market cap, which is "only" $350 million: https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/
iraklism 9y ago
If I'm not mistaken, he was comparing the stolen amount to the entire market cap of ETH (currently 19bil), to make it sound like it was a small amount.
simias 9y ago
I love how the "Downloads" page only tells you... how to buy veritaseum tokens. Apparently their team consists of 3 people too, only one of them being a dev. I'm trying very hard to figure out what they do exactly, apparently they create "Forensic Analysis and Valuation reports" and then sell them but instead of selling them for ETH or BTC they sell them in their own VERI tokens? I think there's more to it than that since the homepage says (in an image I've had to transcribe): "Veritaseum enables software-driven P2P capital markets without brokerages, banks or traditional exchanges". I wonder what percentage of their ICO "investors" really understood what they were pumping their money into. I also hope that some people are thoroughly documenting and archiving all these ICOs, it will make for a very interesting and I'm guessing entertaining post-mortem.
dna_polymerase 9y ago
The hacker stole their BS coin VERI, so he stole 0.07% of all VERI. I guess he can't even sell this crap coin anywhere, because why the fuck should anyone buy Veri now?

phyushin 9y ago

Title is also misleading ... They stole veri tokens and sold for eth not directly stealing any Eth... There was a story here last month that had a headache line like 'guy buys bit coin as 12$/coin is now worth millions' when what he actually did was sell those coins and use the money to start a company which he in turn sold for millions

danmaz74 9y ago
Were they really able to sell the stolen VERI for that amount of ETH? That would be really impressive...
- joshschreuder 9y ago
  Not unless they sold before the news was out. Any mention of a hack is basically a fast track to flash crash in the cryptocurrency space.
- daddyo 9y ago
  They were dumping it at 50% market price for ETH a few days ago. Don't know if they dumped it all or still sitting on a bit for when the market recovers.

Axsuul 9y ago

I have no idea what these guys do. They don't even take the time to explain it. The fact that these guys can run an ICO and call $8.7 million dollars miniscule is what's wrong with ICOs today. This just looks like another run-of-the-mill ICO backed by convoluted, cryptospeak that one can only pretend they know what they actually intend to build [2][3] Even the investors sound sketchy. Why does no one even challenge their business model? [1] I'm willing to bet this hack was an inside job. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887061.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887061.0 [2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By5WJsM3KjltOG https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By5WJsM3KjltOG [3] http://veritas.veritaseum.com/ http://veritas.veritaseum.com/

deleted 9y ago
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grafporno 9y ago
> J. K. Rowling has said that Veritaserum "works best upon the unsuspecting, the vulnerable and those insufficiently skilled (in one way or another) to protect themselves against it... http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Veritaserum http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Veritaserum Hmmm.
- richardknop 9y ago
  So even the name had a hidden scam reference in it. This seems so dodgy now.
  - cvsh 9y ago
    Or maybe they just mashed together the Latin word for 'truth' with 'Ethereum' and the etymology of Veritaserum is coincidentally covergent evolution
    - richardknop 9y ago
      Honestly you're probably right. They wouldn't be so brazen if they planned to steal money from the beginning. But nothing would surprise me in crypto anymore.

bhaak 9y ago

There are no details to this supposed hack and the used attack vector. The given information is so vague, this is indistinguishable from an exit scam. I hope they will come forward with more information but Veritaseum has always looked fishy, about 98% of the tokens are held by one address https://etherscan.io/token/0x8f3470A7388c05eE4e7AF3d01D8C722b0FF52374?#balances https://etherscan.io/token/0x8f3470A7388c05eE4e7AF3d01D8C722... and are not in free circulation.

baraah 9y ago
With the market cap beeing $360.000.000[0], and only 2% beeing in circulation, the value of the stolen tokens seems to be higher than the value of all coins in circulation. 2% of $360,000,000 are $7,200,000 and the hacker stole more than eight million. Or did I get this wrong somehow? [0] https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/ https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/
- mkagenius 9y ago
  2% represent the $360M(market cap, in circulation). 100% is 50 times that, $18B (total supply), i.e. 100M tokens. What is stolen is 0.07% of 100M tokens which is 70K tokens, which is roughly $12M for current market price.
  - ConfucianNardin 9y ago
    According to the founder, the amount of stolen tokens is 37k: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887061.msg20355530#msg20355530 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887061.msg20355530#... That number also matches the number transferred (36,687.9382688909) to this wallet mentioned in the article: https://etherscan.io/address/0x3fff90bf314673194c3a265ed1c0aa68f59550c4#tokentxns https://etherscan.io/address/0x3fff90bf314673194c3a265ed1c0a.... Also, according to two other articles (linked from the bitcointalk thread), cite the value of the stolen as US$4.5M, not US$8.4M: http://www.altcointoday.com/ethereum-ico-veritaseum-suffers-4-5-million-hack/ http://www.altcointoday.com/ethereum-ico-veritaseum-suffers-... http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/07/24/yet-another-ethereum-ico-gets-hacked-veritaseum-loses-us4-5m/ http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/07/24/yet-another-ethereum-ico-g... Checking market charts around the time it happened (~00-08 July 24th), there's a significant dip in value, with the price going as low as US$~122: https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/#charts https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/veritaseum/#charts. At that rate the stolen tokens would be worth US$4.48M.

Oras 9y ago

>Middleton said that a hacker had somehow managed to steal VERI tokens during the ICO. Somehow? they couldn't even figure out how the hack happened? How convincing for their clients.

wodenokoto 9y ago

There seems to be a lot of etherum heist latwly, yet i dont see any shocks in the valuation of etherum. Does the market at large simply not care?

CoryG89 9y ago
It may not be crashing the value, but if we keep seeing hacks sustained at this frequency, it could slow or halt what might otherwise be continued growth.
- rihegher 9y ago
  That is what we saw for bitcoin, however there is still more and more people buying into it.
- uncle_d 9y ago
  ETH did not participate in the big spike of BTC back-end of last week and is now tracking down today.
subroutine 9y ago
This is what you would expect from a currency that is valued arbitrarily.
taysic 9y ago
I don't think they do. It's up 1000% or something since a year ago so it probably will take a while until people lose faith

Jabanga 9y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1giuft/quote_from_john_lyons_ceo_of_the_international/cakvvom/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1giuft/quote_from_...

CoryG89 9y ago
How is this related?
- Jabanga 9y ago
  It's possible a group like this is the culprit. They have the means and motive. There were also massive DDOS attacks against BitcoinXT when it was picking up steam.

deleted 9y ago

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zkSNARK 9y ago

Why don't the ETH people actually put out some decent templates for smart ICO contracts. It seems nonsensical that their platform is supposedly a "world computer" designed to enable smart contracts when a vast majority of the created contracts fail because of being hacked. I invested in the ETH pre-sale and have done very well from it, but I have been selling a bit lately because I think someone else will come along with a system that open sources some really solidly vetted template contracts that have been thoroughly penetration tested by professionals.

monort 9y ago
Actually, the last multi-signature hack was because of the "decent" template contract produced by Ethereum developer.
- zkSNARK 9y ago
  Meaning that the template itself was messed up? Did they hire professionals to attack it in a test scenario or did they just roll with it?
- e79 9y ago
  I'm not so sure about that. Comparing the vulnerable source code to the original (which you can find here https://github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/blob/master/wallet/wallet.sol https://github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/blob/master/wallet/wall...) tells a totally different story. It looks like the vulnerable version tried to condense everything into a single contract (think class), when it had originally been split up into multiple contracts (think classes). The result was that functions that were originally initializers were no longer callable only once. Someone's refactor of the original code seems to be what lead to this issue. The vulnerable functions even started with "init" but were not actually initializers. Unless the original author also introduced the bug, I don't think it's fair to blame the original contract.
slackingoff2017 9y ago
It's not just the templates, Solidity is a terribly designed language. It reminds me of the original JavaScript before 10+ years of dedicated attempts to make it usable. With how many VM's we already have for Java and JavaScript it's idiotic that ETH designed their own language and eventually they will pay the price. This will probably be another coin that comes along without an idiotic language/VM

bhouston 9y ago

Is anyone making money on Ethereum in ways that are unrelated to just currency appreciation/speculation? Is Ethereum actually being used for something meaningful? (I guess in a way though Ethereum found its first killer app, pure currency speculation/appreciation. That gives it time and money to find something more useful.)

lou1306 9y ago
Well, if you consider "showing the world how buggy code can lead to financial disaster" a meaningful activity, then Ethereum is quickly becoming one of our proudest achievement.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  too me everyday ethereum/bitcoin don't go to 0 that further proves the premise and makes the ecosystem stronger.
  - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
    I'm thinking that's what the Pets.com investors thought, too.
    - sharemywin 9y ago
      or google that's the risks of investing. I wouldn't sink my retirement in crypto.
PMan74 9y ago
> Is anyone making money on Ethereum in ways that are unrelated to just currency appreciation/speculation? Yeah, the hackers seems to be doing alright out of it.
- ghthor 9y ago
  They aren't hackers, they are scammers and crackers. Hackers are builders and creators, they persevere in the face of improper tools by being creative.

verytrivial 9y ago

Oh, those naughty, naughty hackers. Oh, well, bad luck everyone. Do keep sending money. You'll soon be able to buy this bridge I'm selling.

FRex 9y ago

I'm really sorry to be that guy but.. again? Even the article says it's 4th time this month. What's going on?

jbmorgado 9y ago
What's going on is that this is just showing what any sane people already knew: any kind of commercial transaction must be backed up by actual real life laws or sooner or later one of the parts gets ripped off. Nobody can - or I would dare say, likes - to be watching is own back every single moment or their existence... but that's what crypto in general expects you to do.
- PretzelPirate 9y ago
  I've been in crypto since early 2013 and I only check my wallet balance when I need to transfer coins to/from it. I may have opened my wallet 5 times in the past 4 years. The risk is increased when you don't control your own private key, if you do, the risk of losing your coins is very small.
- FRex 9y ago
  Still, I'm not into crypto currencies at all and I only hear about Bitcoin (that's understandable) and Etherum (due to all these hacks, the first being the one that lead to ETC vs. ETH fork).

theklub 9y ago

I've thought about this after seeing a few ICO's. If you want to get super rich over night just start your own coin. I mean you could put in a legit effort and really try, still fail and make millions.

computerwizard 9y ago

Anyone make else make a bunch on scooping up cheap coins on etherdelta then selling them the next day?

huntie 9y ago

I don't really follow Ethereum, but from headlines on Hacker News I've learned that 1. Ethereum is difficult to work with 2. Its difficulty does not provide security This doesn't exactly inspire confidence in it. Some comments on this article imply that this was just a scam, so maybe Ethereum is secure. I think that a lot of people learn about things they don't care about via headlines, which may be damaging for Ethereum in its infancy.

sharemywin 9y ago
That would be true if it was steady-state, but there are a lot of people working things in the ecosystem that make it stronger.
- jbmorgado 9y ago
  I guess you can say that Ethereum is also in the "strong and stable" category.
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    I wouldn't get ahead of ourselves.
Nekorosu 9y ago
Development on top of ethereum platform is in it's infancy. SQL injection attacks were as frequent when web development was young. I haven't checked it myself but I guess the current API is quite low level and doesn't include higher level abstractions to prevent this kind of attacks. Also there are no established development practices regarding security.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  But the difference is in the impact of security flaws. It's bad enough if someone steals a bunch of credit card numbers through SQL injection, but at least individuals are indemnified. With Ethereum, poof, it's gone forever.

ascendantlogic 9y ago

"Hacker". On the Ethereum subreddits a lot of people think the CEO is just cashing out and running.

Taek 9y ago
You can tell by how disinterested he seems to be in getting the money back. Anybody who really lost $8 million would be losing sleep, crying, and doing absolutely everything they could to get it back. This guy is not some billionaire, $8 million is a life changing amount for him. You don't just shrug off losing that kind of money. If I had invested in this project, I'd be in touch with the FBI.

razki 9y ago

"hack" 100% wasn't stolen just a marketing stunt.

bflesch 9y ago

This is a youtube video of by one of the founders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdQ3Q6FQYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdQ3Q6FQYE It is linked from the "prospect": https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By5WJsM3KjltOGJHYS1HT3Uyczg/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By5WJsM3KjltOGJHYS1HT3Uyczg... What kind of fools invest into this?

vocatus_gate 9y ago
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Leader2light 9y ago
ROFL, this guy should be in prison.
untangle 9y ago
So shocking it's funny – in the same vein that "American Psycho" was funny. The next step for ICO's will surely be a reality-TV show.

decentralised 9y ago

I'm calling shenanigans on this one, there are too many flags even for a cursory look at this story. 1) there is no code for this project that I was able to find; 2) blogger /personality CEO; 3) no report on the transactions (txHash) that would show the "theft"; 4) https://steemit.com/money/@financialcritic/analysis-of-the-veritaseum-scam https://steemit.com/money/@financialcritic/analysis-of-the-v... 5) https://steemit.com/veritaseum/@deobrands/is-veritaseum-a-scam https://steemit.com/veritaseum/@deobrands/is-veritaseum-a-sc... Finally, and this is subjective but still "feels" odd: The Veritaseum project is built on top of Bitcoin but it was Ether that was taken? If it was a smart contract then number 3 on the my list is even more important because we can replay it as many times as needed until we find the bug or exploit used, if any. PS: Ethereum = refers to the project, the network and the foundation name; Ether = currency issued by the Ethereum network.

Cshelton 9y ago

So I somewhat follow r/Ethereum and I remember seeing a good number of posts about Veritaseum... the general consensus is that it is a scam and has been the target of pump and dump schemes, like many other tokens. This sure does look like an inside job...surely they reported to whatever Government crime bureau in their jurisdiction? But given the terms of many of these sales, there are literally no repercussions if the "company" decides to just take the money and run. Buyer Beware. I think if anything, this whole ICO thing, as I've observed, just enlighten me about what we have consumer protection. It's not so the big corps and such won't scam people...they don't need to even try, people will time and time again, fuck themselves over. It's a sad reality. There was even a "Useless Ethereum Token" that did an ICO and raised something like $50k in a matter of days. Maybe the internet likes paying for jokes... regardless, I know countless people are dumping their next months rent on whatever ICO is happening that day with little regard to anything behind it. Disclaimer: I do believe in the Ethereum platform and am long in it. I also hold FunFair tokens, which I believe to be one of the first platforms that really takes off.

fil_a_del_fee_a 9y ago
I am very intrigued by this FunFair technology. Do you know when the next Token Event will be held? Or how I can get some? I read I can do development work for FunFair tokens, but don't see any more details.
- Cshelton 9y ago
  They had a one time token offering. But yeah, the demo looks good and the CEO of it is well known in the gaming community, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jez_San https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jez_San
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taysic 9y ago
Why are you still long? At this rate it seems ethereum can be easily "disrupted" by something with a similar idea that provides more trust

daddyo 9y ago

Then the hacker proceeded in dumping the Veritaseum for 50% of market value. Now if you believe the price will bounce back, you can make a lot of profit on stolen coins. Immoral? Quite possibly. Against the law? Not this year.

dullgiulio 9y ago
I think it should be tested in court. Many ICOs are the textbook depictions of Ponzi schemes. When there is stealing, possibly self-stealing, involved the word "fraud" comes to mind.
- daddyo 9y ago
  There are a few problems though. - Since Cryptocurrency is international, the US SEC does not have jurisdiction everywhere in the world. When there is millions on the line, you could just move to another country and try a scheme, or direct a foreign lackey to do it. - "The Federal Reserve simply does not have authority to supervise or regulate bitcoin in any way. To the best of my knowledge, there is no intersection at all in any way between Bitcoin and banks that the Federal Reserve has the ability to supervise and regulate." - To count for an exchange you have to issue shares. Not everybody does this. - Is cryptocurrency a token or a security? - How to distinguish between nouveau riche BTC millionaires trying out their luck with an ICO and a criminal organization using it to launder money? - Who is the single legal entity to target when the ICOs are distributed, and no single entity issues coins? - What to do with those that profit from future illegal activity, as a 3rd party? Right now there is a lot of obvious market manipulation going on. Whales banding together to influence and set prices. Pumping up interest with bots and 5-cent army trolls. Selling stolen coins for 50% of market value. Sharing upcoming announcements with a small group of investors, devs, and supporters, allowing them to speculate on insider knowledge. How do they prove I must have known about the stolen coins, when the news hasn't even broken yet and I already put out a buy order of 50% of the price in case of a flash crash?
- davotoula 9y ago
  Not all ICOs are the same. Their parameters (for example is the token for utility or just for speculation) vary. There is a test in law that people can apply to try and tell whether a specific ICO is a security or not: the Howey test. http://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-howey-test.html http://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-howey...

Leader2light 9y ago

All these BS coins are going to destroy the entire idea. Not that it will be a great loss. :)

mcs_ 9y ago

The compiler should fire warnings to prevent injection like attacks. I understand solidity is a tool to program what to do with balance... A super set of rules that (at least) alerts the developers about dangerous operations will probably become a thing in the future.

bradjohnson 9y ago

I just want to take a second and complain about the twitchy monstrosity that is the floating nav bar. I scroll up to read text above and it covers up the text I'm currently reading so I have to scroll up twice and then down once to get rid of it. It's obnoxious and ugly and I wish it wasn't so popular. /rant