9 ms·

Breaking open the Mt. Gox case, part 1

372 points by pcorey 9y ago

buryat 9y ago
So according to the following, Vinnik was aware of the origin of bitcoins that were sold on BTC-e: > Some of the funds moved to BTC-e seem to have moved straight to internal storage rather than customer deposit addresses, hinting at a relationship between Vinnik and BTC-e. and he was stupid enough to deposit them back to his account on MtGox: > Moving coins back onto MtGox was what let us identify Vinnik, as the MtGox accounts he used could be linked to his online identity "WME" http://archive.is/6cFcY http://archive.is/6cFcY All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme. I wonder, if BTC-e somehow artificially pumped the bitcoin valuation leveraging the huge amount of bitcoins they put hands on, same as what MtGox did. Also, it looks like that Mark Karpeles wasn't involved in the whole scheme, and the hack was that simple thanks to the low or no security and engineering culture at MtGox: > In September 2011, the MtGox hot wallet private keys were stolen, in a case of a simple copied wallet.dat file. > the shared keypool of the wallet.dat file lead to address reuse, which confused MtGox's systems into mistakenly interpreting some of the thief's spending as deposits, crediting multiple user accounts with large sums of BTC and causing MtGox's numbers to go further out of balance by about 40,000 BTC. None of these users seem to have reported their "sudden luck".
- ryanlol 9y ago
  >All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme. Well duh, anyone involved in the Bitcoin community was very well aware of this. BTC-e has been flagrantly disregarding AML and KYC laws for it's entire existence.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    Lots of people in Bitcoin hate KYC and AML laws, and consider them invasive. I am one of these people. In itself, it's not an indicator of wrongdoing.
    - xg15 9y ago
      Except potentially breaking the law.
    - ryanlol 9y ago
      I don't know what you're getting at here? We're not discussing wrongdoings, but violations of the law. BTC-e was operating illegally for a very long time and everyone knew this. If your dislike of KYC and AML laws led you to believe that BTC-e was on solid legal ground, then you're simply stupid.
    - empath75 9y ago
      Breaking the law is an indicator of criminal behavior, whether you like the law or not.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Hating KYC/AML law may not be a strong indicator of legal wrongdoing; breaking it, OTOH, is not merely an indicator of legal wrongdoing, but is itself such wrongdoing.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - lmm 9y ago
      Yes it is. The laws were legitimately passed; agree or not, citizens have a duty to follow them, or else protest them directly if they find them onerous enough.
  - alfon 9y ago
    Btc-e is currently under 'unplanned maintenance' [1], does anyone know if it has something to do with this?. [1] https://btc-e.com/ https://btc-e.com/
    - ryanlol 9y ago
      Almost certainly. BTC-e always describes any and all issues as "maintenance".
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - r721 9y ago
      >A Russian national arrested in Greece on Wednesday on suspicion of laundering criminal funds by switching them into bitcoins is a key person behind the BTC-e crypto-currency exchange, two sources close to the exchange told Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-russia-arrest-bitcoin-idUSKBN1AB27W http://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-russia-arrest-bitco...
  - someonewhocar3s 9y ago
    "Flagrantly disregarding" That BITCOIN IS NOT MONEY - so KYC IS NOT LEGALLY MANDATE At least not in civil countries. I also disagree that Money Laundering is the root of all evil. The crime is the problem, fighting the symptoms of crime (it's pay) harder than the source is, eh, ludicrous. But when you realise you actually sacrifice freedom of speech for it, that's when it gets /really/ icky. (US Supreme Court named financial transactions speech, as without donating to your cause your cause is f-kd. So it should be private & anonymous, or you give away the freedom of spending, which equals the freedom of speech) So, do I want to increase my attack surface (=being named and known to the USGOV or whomever wrt buying/trading cryptocurrency and spending it where I will), or will I use BTC-e, which respects that freedom? Hmmm. BTC-e always had a criminal vibe to it, so that might alter your choice. Regardless the vibe, you suggest self-censorship, ID'ing yourself and confessing wherever you spend, because..? You're afraid of Money Laundering? Check the Panama Papers - you're barking up the wrong tree. I think you're doing it because you're afraid of the panopticon seeing you hide yourself. It's inhumane how effective this mechanism already is.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dmix 9y ago
  > All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme. I don't see how this proves he had direct involvement in the scheme instead of just running a laundering service for people. This blog post mentioned he was connected to other thefts as well: >> The stolen MtGox coins were not the only stolen coins handled by Vinnik; coins stolen from Bitcoinica, Bitfloor and several other thefts from back in 2011 and 2012 were all laundered through the same wallets. Not much solid evidence here of direct involvement in the hacks despite the bold claims, but it does look like there is some connection to the crime at the post-hack stage...
  - vesinisa 9y ago
    In the archived BitcoinTalk post (http://archive.is/6cFcY http://archive.is/6cFcY) he makes several references to that he is working and handling the frozen funds for a "client". (He also happens to reveal his full legal name.) Supports him working as a money launder or front man for someone else.
  - mikeyouse 9y ago
    If he ran BTC-e and some of the stolen Mt Gox coins were transferred directly from the Gox wallet to BTC-e's internal wallet (bypassing the BTC-e customer deposit wallets), doesn't that necessarily mean he was involved?
- zapt02 9y ago
  I find the tidbit that he moved the coins back to MtGox to be hilarious, and that being his downfall oddly poetic. It's like robbing a bank, just to waltz in with their money the following week and deposit it into that same bank.
strgrd 9y ago
I remember a time when BTC-e was the most logical exchange to use, especially in the fallout of MtGox. I really enjoyed how straightforward the exchange was, and how easy it was to get started using their API. I don't think they're coming back after this.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- h1d 9y ago
  Was never the logical choice.
Jabanga 9y ago
This would have all been avoided if MtGox had transferred its coins to a new wallet after the 2011 breach. I guess they assumed that any attacker that got access to the private keys would have immediately emptied the wallet, and the fact that this hadn't happened proved that the private keys hadn't been compromised by the breach. I have to admit, that is a reasonable assumption. This may show the limits of the usefulness of heuristics, and the importance of organizations like exchanges, that have very significant fiduciary duties, to undertake a systematic process after a security breach to eliminate all possible remaining vulnerabilities, no matter how unlikely and counterintuitive.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  I don't care how reasonable the assumption is, moving those coins would have cost nothing! It's inexcusable not to have done that.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  I only hear about the hackers that empty addresses and wondered if they could be more effective by slowly draining. Well now know turns out the biggest one was doing just that
  - richdougherty 9y ago
    And even re-depositing it back!
    - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
      At least I finally have comfort in my 2011 decisions not to buy bitcoin for $2 each with my little disposable cash: "I'm not sending my living money to a sketchy exchange in Japan" This is the exact sketchy kind of thing I imagined would be happening.
- jmcqk6 9y ago
  >I have to admit, that is a reasonable assumption. I really have to disagree. You get breached, you change your private keys. There shouldn't be a debate about that.
austenallred 9y ago
Can't wait to get my refund :) It's still insane to me that MtGox never moved coins to a wallet or acknowledged the breach until long after it was too late. You would think if you have billions of dollars sitting somewhere and you realize someone is starting to take them you would, you know, do something.
- wcummings 9y ago
  >Can't wait to get my refund :) I had like 0.000001 BTC in mtgox and it was worth it for the cute sticky unfoldy postcard thing I got from the Japanese court.
  - vocatus_gate 9y ago
    Same here, I saved mine to show to my kids some day. "Hey look kids, your dad was summoned to a Japanese district court over the loss of 0.0001 bitcoin!"
    - mtanski 9y ago
      Since bitcoin is deflationary (max supply) it's technically possible that 0.0001 might be worth something one day.
      - vocatus_gate 9y ago
        My holdings are much higher than that so it's a drop in the bucket either way at this point.
  - tinco 9y ago
    When did you get that? I never received such a card.
    - wcummings 9y ago
      Years ago, it stated I was a creditor and was owed some comically tiny amount of BTC I had left in my account. Cool form factor, a sorta sticky postcard sized accordian you would pull apart, japanese on one side, english on the other.
jron 9y ago
Never a dull moment in Bitcoin.
- vocatus_gate 9y ago
  If penny stocks are the cocaine of the finance world, bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies are like freebasing crack.
  - FRex 9y ago
    More like krokodil.
    - JCzynski 9y ago
      Give BTC a little credit, it's capable of giving you a solid rush and getting you(r bank balance) high. It doesn't always bankrupt you. That's a lot better than you can say of krokodil.
      - vocatus_gate 9y ago
        I don't even know what krokodili IS so I'll take your word for it, ha ha
        runholm 9y ago
        It's what you get if you walk into a gas station determined to mix everything they have on their shelves and hope this results in a drug. It's a very cheap and easy drug to create, but its ability to destroy the user's body far surpasses more conventional drugs like heroin. The life expectancy of a user is 1-2 years as their tissue starts to die.
        FRex 9y ago
        It's an old obsolete but very potent pain killer that recently resurfaced in Russia and it makes you body rot and require amputations. I think it's an apt comparison of the 'potence' of these two things. People who take coke don't rot alive and die within a few years. Similarly penny stocks are (relatively) harmless, never used to buy illegal stuff and people who do them don't go around saying that penny stocks will replace all finances and currencies and cause a revolution against the corrupt banker filled governments and accuse everyone of being governmental propagandists (yada, yada..), many of Bitcoin proponents on the other hand...
NelsonMinar 9y ago
The coin flow graph is terrific: http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg Is this type of visualization common in Bitcoin? Is it a tool anyone can easily use? Edit, let me restate my question. "Is there a tool that generates Sankey diagrams from blockchain data that is easy to use?"
- barkingcat 9y ago
  This is relatively easy to do since all bitcoin traffic is transparent and open for easy tracking. You can probably do this in gnuplot. Anyone who has the blockchain downloaded can run their own analysis algorithms on it - it's already there for you to see.
  - kzrdude 9y ago
    I imagine the difficult part is to group transactions and addresses into understandable entities. A good tool could certainly make incremental diagrams that help improving that grouping though.
  - h1d 9y ago
    You sound like the poster dismissing DropBox's idea saying it could be manually done easily.
- showerst 9y ago
  These are called Sankey diagrams.
  - codezero 9y ago
    I read this as Snakey and it still works :)
  - sonium 9y ago
    Actually more specific is 'alluvial diagram' [1] since the style emphasizes a 'flow' character. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alluvial_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alluvial_diagram [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankey_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankey_diagram
scotty79 9y ago
If they recover some coins, will they be transferred to mtgox bankruptcy trustee.
- h1d 9y ago
  If they can prove that they came out of it, I hope so.
Pyxl101 9y ago
It sounds like MtGox must have had no auditing of their wallets, or completely ineffective auditing. How did they not at least perform a simple sum of coins held by their wallets and compare it against the amount expected by their databases? Or is the attack more sophisticated than this would detect? If I were building a system like this, I'd want to run an auditing system continuously that looks for discrepancies, and then "shuts down everything" if they're detected.
- FRex 9y ago
  The site was originally made for trading Magic The Gathering Online cards by one guy who later got bored and then got into Bitcoin but I have no idea and wikipedia doesn't mention if they reused any code or just the domain name itself. It's a fun piece of trivia one crypto currency guy told me and it seems to be true.
  - camjohnson26 9y ago
    Yep. Mt Gox = MTG: Online Exchange
  - mobiletelephone 9y ago
    Magic the Gathering Online Exchange ;)
    - FRex 9y ago
      Yes, I never realized.. seriously, I didn't until today. I thought it was meant to sounds like Knox and Mount to invoke images of gold, vault in a mountain side and so on.
  - vesinisa 9y ago
    IIRC the site was written in PHP and it was a miracle it didn't get hacked earlier (or, now it seems, it did, but the hackers kept the site running to maximize the heist). https://gist.github.com/alainmeier/9319451 https://gist.github.com/alainmeier/9319451
dmix 9y ago
> By mid 2013 [..] the thief had taken out about 630,000 BTC from MtGox. 630,000 BTC to USD = 1,560,069,000.00 US Dollars Crazy. $1.5 billion USD = 2.5% of Bitcoin's market cap ($40 billion) and someone stole it.
- loader 9y ago
  Around Mid 2013 Bitcoin supply was around 11.5M coins so 630K was more like 5.5% of total Bitcoin. Just using a different kind of math. There's more coins now so using todays market cap % makes it seem less then it actually was.
  - mikeyouse 9y ago
    But mid 2013, the price of Bitcoin was ~$100.. So 630k was "only" $63 million. A much larger percentage of a much smaller asset.
- i_am_nomad 9y ago
  Of course, there is almost no way to liquidate those BTC for $1.5 billion. Unless you can find a buyer for all of them at once, the market price will fall sharply as you sell them off.
zx2c4 9y ago
Unrelated to the actual topic at hand, but anybody know which software generated this svg? http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg I like graphs like this. They remind me of Charles Joseph Minard's famous Napoleon graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard#/media/File:Minard.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard#/media/F...
- wmf 9y ago
  D3: https://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/ https://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/
racecliffer 9y ago
Is the diagram simplifying things? It looks like in a number of cases, coins were stolen, sent to a single wallet, and then sent to an exchange. That doesn't seem like a particularly ambitious attempt to launder. I must be missing something...
- wmf 9y ago
  If the exchange doesn't know its customers and doesn't keep logs then it might be successful.
asdz 9y ago
Until today, I'm still waiting for my Mt.Gox refund :(
aurora- 9y ago
If someone can steal 600k over a period of 2 years, I put 99% of the blame with the exchange. We still don't know if it wasn't an inside job, but I don't think it matters. The blame lays inside either way.

372 points by pcorey 9y ago

So according to the following, Vinnik was aware of the origin of bitcoins that were sold on BTC-e: > Some of the funds moved to BTC-e seem to have moved straight to internal storage rather than customer deposit addresses, hinting at a relationship between Vinnik and BTC-e. and he was stupid enough to deposit them back to his account on MtGox: > Moving coins back onto MtGox was what let us identify Vinnik, as the MtGox accounts he used could be linked to his online identity "WME" http://archive.is/6cFcY http://archive.is/6cFcY All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme. I wonder, if BTC-e somehow artificially pumped the bitcoin valuation leveraging the huge amount of bitcoins they put hands on, same as what MtGox did. Also, it looks like that Mark Karpeles wasn't involved in the whole scheme, and the hack was that simple thanks to the low or no security and engineering culture at MtGox: > In September 2011, the MtGox hot wallet private keys were stolen, in a case of a simple copied wallet.dat file. > the shared keypool of the wallet.dat file lead to address reuse, which confused MtGox's systems into mistakenly interpreting some of the thief's spending as deposits, crediting multiple user accounts with large sums of BTC and causing MtGox's numbers to go further out of balance by about 40,000 BTC. None of these users seem to have reported their "sudden luck".

ryanlol 9y ago
>All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme. Well duh, anyone involved in the Bitcoin community was very well aware of this. BTC-e has been flagrantly disregarding AML and KYC laws for it's entire existence.
- jstanley 9y ago
  Lots of people in Bitcoin hate KYC and AML laws, and consider them invasive. I am one of these people. In itself, it's not an indicator of wrongdoing.
  - xg15 9y ago
    Except potentially breaking the law.
  - ryanlol 9y ago
    I don't know what you're getting at here? We're not discussing wrongdoings, but violations of the law. BTC-e was operating illegally for a very long time and everyone knew this. If your dislike of KYC and AML laws led you to believe that BTC-e was on solid legal ground, then you're simply stupid.
  - empath75 9y ago
    Breaking the law is an indicator of criminal behavior, whether you like the law or not.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Hating KYC/AML law may not be a strong indicator of legal wrongdoing; breaking it, OTOH, is not merely an indicator of legal wrongdoing, but is itself such wrongdoing.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - lmm 9y ago
    Yes it is. The laws were legitimately passed; agree or not, citizens have a duty to follow them, or else protest them directly if they find them onerous enough.
- alfon 9y ago
  Btc-e is currently under 'unplanned maintenance' [1], does anyone know if it has something to do with this?. [1] https://btc-e.com/ https://btc-e.com/
  - ryanlol 9y ago
    Almost certainly. BTC-e always describes any and all issues as "maintenance".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - r721 9y ago
    >A Russian national arrested in Greece on Wednesday on suspicion of laundering criminal funds by switching them into bitcoins is a key person behind the BTC-e crypto-currency exchange, two sources close to the exchange told Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-russia-arrest-bitcoin-idUSKBN1AB27W http://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-russia-arrest-bitco...
- someonewhocar3s 9y ago
  "Flagrantly disregarding" That BITCOIN IS NOT MONEY - so KYC IS NOT LEGALLY MANDATE At least not in civil countries. I also disagree that Money Laundering is the root of all evil. The crime is the problem, fighting the symptoms of crime (it's pay) harder than the source is, eh, ludicrous. But when you realise you actually sacrifice freedom of speech for it, that's when it gets /really/ icky. (US Supreme Court named financial transactions speech, as without donating to your cause your cause is f-kd. So it should be private & anonymous, or you give away the freedom of spending, which equals the freedom of speech) So, do I want to increase my attack surface (=being named and known to the USGOV or whomever wrt buying/trading cryptocurrency and spending it where I will), or will I use BTC-e, which respects that freedom? Hmmm. BTC-e always had a criminal vibe to it, so that might alter your choice. Regardless the vibe, you suggest self-censorship, ID'ing yourself and confessing wherever you spend, because..? You're afraid of Money Laundering? Check the Panama Papers - you're barking up the wrong tree. I think you're doing it because you're afraid of the panopticon seeing you hide yourself. It's inhumane how effective this mechanism already is.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dmix 9y ago
> All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme. I don't see how this proves he had direct involvement in the scheme instead of just running a laundering service for people. This blog post mentioned he was connected to other thefts as well: >> The stolen MtGox coins were not the only stolen coins handled by Vinnik; coins stolen from Bitcoinica, Bitfloor and several other thefts from back in 2011 and 2012 were all laundered through the same wallets. Not much solid evidence here of direct involvement in the hacks despite the bold claims, but it does look like there is some connection to the crime at the post-hack stage...
- vesinisa 9y ago
  In the archived BitcoinTalk post (http://archive.is/6cFcY http://archive.is/6cFcY) he makes several references to that he is working and handling the frozen funds for a "client". (He also happens to reveal his full legal name.) Supports him working as a money launder or front man for someone else.
- mikeyouse 9y ago
  If he ran BTC-e and some of the stolen Mt Gox coins were transferred directly from the Gox wallet to BTC-e's internal wallet (bypassing the BTC-e customer deposit wallets), doesn't that necessarily mean he was involved?
zapt02 9y ago
I find the tidbit that he moved the coins back to MtGox to be hilarious, and that being his downfall oddly poetic. It's like robbing a bank, just to waltz in with their money the following week and deposit it into that same bank.

strgrd 9y ago

I remember a time when BTC-e was the most logical exchange to use, especially in the fallout of MtGox. I really enjoyed how straightforward the exchange was, and how easy it was to get started using their API. I don't think they're coming back after this.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
h1d 9y ago
Was never the logical choice.

Jabanga 9y ago

This would have all been avoided if MtGox had transferred its coins to a new wallet after the 2011 breach. I guess they assumed that any attacker that got access to the private keys would have immediately emptied the wallet, and the fact that this hadn't happened proved that the private keys hadn't been compromised by the breach. I have to admit, that is a reasonable assumption. This may show the limits of the usefulness of heuristics, and the importance of organizations like exchanges, that have very significant fiduciary duties, to undertake a systematic process after a security breach to eliminate all possible remaining vulnerabilities, no matter how unlikely and counterintuitive.

StavrosK 9y ago
I don't care how reasonable the assumption is, moving those coins would have cost nothing! It's inexcusable not to have done that.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
I only hear about the hackers that empty addresses and wondered if they could be more effective by slowly draining. Well now know turns out the biggest one was doing just that
- richdougherty 9y ago
  And even re-depositing it back!
  - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
    At least I finally have comfort in my 2011 decisions not to buy bitcoin for $2 each with my little disposable cash: "I'm not sending my living money to a sketchy exchange in Japan" This is the exact sketchy kind of thing I imagined would be happening.
jmcqk6 9y ago
>I have to admit, that is a reasonable assumption. I really have to disagree. You get breached, you change your private keys. There shouldn't be a debate about that.

austenallred 9y ago

Can't wait to get my refund :) It's still insane to me that MtGox never moved coins to a wallet or acknowledged the breach until long after it was too late. You would think if you have billions of dollars sitting somewhere and you realize someone is starting to take them you would, you know, do something.

wcummings 9y ago
>Can't wait to get my refund :) I had like 0.000001 BTC in mtgox and it was worth it for the cute sticky unfoldy postcard thing I got from the Japanese court.
- vocatus_gate 9y ago
  Same here, I saved mine to show to my kids some day. "Hey look kids, your dad was summoned to a Japanese district court over the loss of 0.0001 bitcoin!"
  - mtanski 9y ago
    Since bitcoin is deflationary (max supply) it's technically possible that 0.0001 might be worth something one day.
    - vocatus_gate 9y ago
      My holdings are much higher than that so it's a drop in the bucket either way at this point.
- tinco 9y ago
  When did you get that? I never received such a card.
  - wcummings 9y ago
    Years ago, it stated I was a creditor and was owed some comically tiny amount of BTC I had left in my account. Cool form factor, a sorta sticky postcard sized accordian you would pull apart, japanese on one side, english on the other.

jron 9y ago

Never a dull moment in Bitcoin.

vocatus_gate 9y ago
If penny stocks are the cocaine of the finance world, bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies are like freebasing crack.
- FRex 9y ago
  More like krokodil.
  - JCzynski 9y ago
    Give BTC a little credit, it's capable of giving you a solid rush and getting you(r bank balance) high. It doesn't always bankrupt you. That's a lot better than you can say of krokodil.
    - vocatus_gate 9y ago
      I don't even know what krokodili IS so I'll take your word for it, ha ha
      - runholm 9y ago
        It's what you get if you walk into a gas station determined to mix everything they have on their shelves and hope this results in a drug. It's a very cheap and easy drug to create, but its ability to destroy the user's body far surpasses more conventional drugs like heroin. The life expectancy of a user is 1-2 years as their tissue starts to die.
      - FRex 9y ago
        It's an old obsolete but very potent pain killer that recently resurfaced in Russia and it makes you body rot and require amputations. I think it's an apt comparison of the 'potence' of these two things. People who take coke don't rot alive and die within a few years. Similarly penny stocks are (relatively) harmless, never used to buy illegal stuff and people who do them don't go around saying that penny stocks will replace all finances and currencies and cause a revolution against the corrupt banker filled governments and accuse everyone of being governmental propagandists (yada, yada..), many of Bitcoin proponents on the other hand...

NelsonMinar 9y ago

The coin flow graph is terrific: http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg Is this type of visualization common in Bitcoin? Is it a tool anyone can easily use? Edit, let me restate my question. "Is there a tool that generates Sankey diagrams from blockchain data that is easy to use?"

barkingcat 9y ago
This is relatively easy to do since all bitcoin traffic is transparent and open for easy tracking. You can probably do this in gnuplot. Anyone who has the blockchain downloaded can run their own analysis algorithms on it - it's already there for you to see.
- kzrdude 9y ago
  I imagine the difficult part is to group transactions and addresses into understandable entities. A good tool could certainly make incremental diagrams that help improving that grouping though.
- h1d 9y ago
  You sound like the poster dismissing DropBox's idea saying it could be manually done easily.
showerst 9y ago
These are called Sankey diagrams.
- codezero 9y ago
  I read this as Snakey and it still works :)
- sonium 9y ago
  Actually more specific is 'alluvial diagram' [1] since the style emphasizes a 'flow' character. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alluvial_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alluvial_diagram [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankey_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankey_diagram

scotty79 9y ago

If they recover some coins, will they be transferred to mtgox bankruptcy trustee.

h1d 9y ago
If they can prove that they came out of it, I hope so.

Pyxl101 9y ago

It sounds like MtGox must have had no auditing of their wallets, or completely ineffective auditing. How did they not at least perform a simple sum of coins held by their wallets and compare it against the amount expected by their databases? Or is the attack more sophisticated than this would detect? If I were building a system like this, I'd want to run an auditing system continuously that looks for discrepancies, and then "shuts down everything" if they're detected.

FRex 9y ago
The site was originally made for trading Magic The Gathering Online cards by one guy who later got bored and then got into Bitcoin but I have no idea and wikipedia doesn't mention if they reused any code or just the domain name itself. It's a fun piece of trivia one crypto currency guy told me and it seems to be true.
- camjohnson26 9y ago
  Yep. Mt Gox = MTG: Online Exchange
- mobiletelephone 9y ago
  Magic the Gathering Online Exchange ;)
  - FRex 9y ago
    Yes, I never realized.. seriously, I didn't until today. I thought it was meant to sounds like Knox and Mount to invoke images of gold, vault in a mountain side and so on.
- vesinisa 9y ago
  IIRC the site was written in PHP and it was a miracle it didn't get hacked earlier (or, now it seems, it did, but the hackers kept the site running to maximize the heist). https://gist.github.com/alainmeier/9319451 https://gist.github.com/alainmeier/9319451

dmix 9y ago

> By mid 2013 [..] the thief had taken out about 630,000 BTC from MtGox. 630,000 BTC to USD = 1,560,069,000.00 US Dollars Crazy. $1.5 billion USD = 2.5% of Bitcoin's market cap ($40 billion) and someone stole it.

loader 9y ago
Around Mid 2013 Bitcoin supply was around 11.5M coins so 630K was more like 5.5% of total Bitcoin. Just using a different kind of math. There's more coins now so using todays market cap % makes it seem less then it actually was.
- mikeyouse 9y ago
  But mid 2013, the price of Bitcoin was ~$100.. So 630k was "only" $63 million. A much larger percentage of a much smaller asset.
i_am_nomad 9y ago
Of course, there is almost no way to liquidate those BTC for $1.5 billion. Unless you can find a buyer for all of them at once, the market price will fall sharply as you sell them off.

zx2c4 9y ago

Unrelated to the actual topic at hand, but anybody know which software generated this svg? http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg I like graphs like this. They remind me of Charles Joseph Minard's famous Napoleon graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard#/media/File:Minard.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard#/media/F...

wmf 9y ago
D3: https://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/ https://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/

racecliffer 9y ago

Is the diagram simplifying things? It looks like in a number of cases, coins were stolen, sent to a single wallet, and then sent to an exchange. That doesn't seem like a particularly ambitious attempt to launder. I must be missing something...

wmf 9y ago
If the exchange doesn't know its customers and doesn't keep logs then it might be successful.

asdz 9y ago

Until today, I'm still waiting for my Mt.Gox refund :(

aurora- 9y ago

If someone can steal 600k over a period of 2 years, I put 99% of the blame with the exchange. We still don't know if it wasn't an inside job, but I don't think it matters. The blame lays inside either way.