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IOTA has been notoriously famous for rolling their own flawed hash function which allowed researches to develop a working PoC for hash collision attacks. https

• redka 9y ago
  How is this relevant in _any_ way to the discussion? It's obvious what your agenda is but not apparent why your post is at the top. Your sidenote linking to http://come-from-beyond.com/about-me/ http://come-from-beyond.com/about-me/ and claiming that it's not a satirical website is comical.
  • 0wing 9y ago
    If you read the article you would see it's about IOTA. More importantly, IOTA never implemented seed generation into their native client software. With this being THE central function to their entire platform, one has to question the priorities and motives of the team behind this project. When coupled with the comments by the CEO, one has to ask if the negligence is so absurdly severe it's malicious?
    • redka 9y ago
      I read the article. It's a technical overview of a website designed to scam users. It doesn't reflect in any way that IOTA as a tech is insecure. Your claims are not related in any way to the contents of the article, are overreaching and biased. The allegations you've mentioned have been debunked [1]. Seed is basically a password so it's understandable it's not generated by the client software but many tutorials exist on how to create a secure one [2][3]. [1] https://blog.iota.org/official-iota-foundation-response-to-the-digital-currency-initiative-at-the-mit-media-lab-part-1-72434583a2 https://blog.iota.org/official-iota-foundation-response-to-t... [2] https://iotasupport.com/gui-newseed.shtml https://iotasupport.com/gui-newseed.shtml [3] https://iota.guide/seed/how-to-generate-iota-wallet-seed/ https://iota.guide/seed/how-to-generate-iota-wallet-seed/
      • 0wing 9y ago
        IOTA designers decided to leave out the seed generation function of their software, which predictably let 3rd parties like the one in the article create a malicious seed to exploit the platform. Every other cryptocurrency software can facilitate wallet generation seeds natively, why does IOTA refuse to implement it? I'm simply providing historical facts. Your bias as an invested speculator is clear. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15634175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15634175 The response to the IOTA hash flaw has a followup from MIT as well: https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/iota-response/ https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/iota-response/ On Friday, MIT Technology Review published an article on the cryptocurrency IOTA. The headline stated that the currency “could outperform Bitcoin.” However, we here at the MIT Media Lab have issues with the story. Specifically, my colleagues in the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) recently uncovered a gaping hole in IOTA’s software. And while that flaw has now been patched, we certainly disagree with reporter Michael Orcutt’s assertion that IOTA is “secure.” As the Director of the MIT Media Lab, I felt it important we outline our specific concerns. — Joi* Quote One: “The rally began in late November, after the IOTA Foundation, the German nonprofit behind the novel cryptocurrency, announced that it was teaming up with several major technology firms to develop a ‘decentralized data marketplace.’” The article goes on to say: “And the high-profile names participating in its data market pilot— including Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom, and Fujitsu—suggest IOTA is onto something.” Response One: IOTA’s relationships with top-tier companies continue to be nebulous. In the Technology Review article, Orcutt linked to a November 28, 2017 blog post from IOTA that gave the perception that Microsoft was a partner in the marketplace. However, after a flurry of media reports making this claim, IOTA corrected their relationship status with top-tier companies like Microsoft, Cisco, and Huawei in a blog post dated December 16. That the MIT Tech Review story links to IOTA’s initial blog post instead of the later version is misleading. Quote Two: Though IOTA tokens can be used like any other cryptocurrency, the protocol was designed specifically for use on connected devices, says cofounder David Sønstebø. Organizations collect huge amounts of data from these gadgets, from weather tracking systems to sensors that monitor the performance of industrial machinery (a.k.a. the Internet of things). But nearly all of that information is wasted, sitting in siloed databases and not making money for its owners, says Sønstebø. IOTA’s system can address this in two ways, he says. First, it can assure the integrity of this data by securing it in a tamper-proof decentralized ledger. Response Two: Whether or not IOTA’s ledger is “tamper-proof,” the entire IOTA network went down in November, and was completely inoperable for about three days. That this has never happened in Bitcoin or Ethereum suggests the extent to which the IOTA network relies on the “coordinator”—a single point of failure—and is not truly decentralized. Also troubling, IOTA developers were able to transfer funds out of users’ IOTA accounts. The user was then required to participate in a “reclaim” process to request their funds. We believe IOTA’s developers should not have access to such funds; it’s rife with risk. Quote Three: Second, it enables fee-less transactions between the owners of the data and anyone who wants to buy it—and there are plenty of companies that want to get their hands on data. Now, here’s where things get really interesting. Instead of a blockchain, IOTA uses a “tangle,” which is based on a mathematical concept called a directed acyclic graph. Sønstebø says his team pursued an alternative approach after deciding that blockchains are too costly—it has recently cost as much as $20 per Bitcoin transaction because of high demand—and inefficient to operate at the scale required for the Internet of things. Response Three: Orcutt’s claim that IOTA is free of fees is misleading. Though perhaps not immediately obvious, IOTA transactions are "zero fee" in exactly the same way that Bitcoin transactions are. An important difference is that Bitcoin has miners who can perform the proof of work for you, while IOTA users do the proof of work on their own devices, per transaction. However, a Bitcoin user can also mine their own block to get their transactions accepted into the blockchain without paying fees. To put it another way, most people wouldn’t be interested in buying a refrigerator operated by a hand crank, even if the advertisement said “No electricity required!” It’s true that transactions with Bitcoin and other digital currencies, even when amortized over a block with thousands of other transactions, require much more work than transactions in IOTA. However, the claim is not that IOTA transactions are easier—the claim appears to be that IOTA transactions are free. Semantics aside, this claim, which appears in IOTA marketing materials, is deceptive; the work required is a fee, whether or not it requires a monetary payment. Restricting the ways in which the fee can be paid—requiring that the work be done on a user’s own device—doesn’t make it go away. Quote Four: “In August, researchers from MIT and Boston University reported that they discovered a “serious vulnerability” in a novel cryptographic technique IOTA was using. IOTA has patched the vulnerability, and Sønstebø says that security measures in place would have prevented anyone from losing funds. The foundation has hired a third-party firm to help it continue to develop the technique, which Sønstebø says represents the kind of “lightweight cryptography” needed for low-power connected devices, like sensors.” Response Four: Once the Digital Currency Initiative published the break in IOTA’s curl hash function, its author, Sergey Ivancheglo, offered two conflicting explanations for the vulnerability. The first explanation was that the flaw was intentional—that it was meant to serve as a form of “copy protection.” If anyone used this code in their own work, he said, the IOTA developers would be able to exploit the flaw and damage other systems that were using the hash function. However, later, he offered a conflicting explanation that he didn’t write the curl at all, but that an AI wrote it. We do not find either of these explanations convincing, even in isolation. That they contradict each other makes them even less so.
• Pyxl101 9y ago
  Why in the world would they design a custom hash function?! How amateurish. As Bruce Scneier said: > In 2017, leaving your crypto algorithm vulnerable to differential cryptanalysis is a rookie mistake. It says that no one of any calibre analyzed their system, and that the odds that their fix makes the system secure is low — Bruce Schneier (about IOTA) OK, it looks like the answer is they designed a custom hash function because their system is built with ternary logic (?!?): https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply-alarming-934f1908194b https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply-alarming-934f1... ... because "Ternary is the optimal radix" according to their cofounder: > Ternary is the optimal radix, actually Base E (2.71....) is, but you can't make processors like that. So it comes down to Base Binary (2) vs Base Ternary (3). 3 is closer to the universal optimum 2.71 than is 2. That is the absolute most simple elevator pitch for ternary. https://iota.stackexchange.com/questions/8/why-does-iota-use-a-ternary-number-system https://iota.stackexchange.com/questions/8/why-does-iota-use... Reading about the design of this system, I feel like I just entered the twilight zone, or maybe the website for Time Cube. Urbit makes more sense than this. (The design of Urbit makes fine sense, it's just the implementation is extremely obscure.)
  • nerdponx 9y ago
    Plus, if e is in fact the optimal radix, then there's no way to say that 3 is "more optimal" than 2. That's making all kinds of assumptions about the optimality curve. Assuming such a curve even exists...
  • taserian 9y ago
    I recognize that premise about 3 being an optimal radix from https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/sjmiller/public_html/105Sp10/addcomments/Hayes_ThirdBase.htm https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/sjmiller/public_html/10...
• mcintyre1994 9y ago
  Your first two further reading links both go to Medium(-branded) 404 pages.
  • DennisP 9y ago
    Nick Johnson: https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply-alarming-934f1908194b https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply-alarming-934f1... Daniel Rice: https://medium.com/@thedrbits/why-i-also-find-iota-deeply-alarming-99d4f2da3282 https://medium.com/@thedrbits/why-i-also-find-iota-deeply-al...
• black_puppydog 9y ago
  This subthread is really why I tend to ignore most crypto debate nowadays. Your points might all be valid, but even if they are/were, this entire subthread would be beside the point here IMHO.
• jacquesm 9y ago
  > Sergey Ivancheglo claims to have built a time machine http://come-from-beyond.com/about-me/ http://come-from-beyond.com/about-me/ How modest. That guy needs help.
  • eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    Your sarcasm detector needs replacement.
• dmix 9y ago
  > if you can't even be bothered to read 2 minutes about it and make such a mistake, that is entirely on you. .. > It's covered in GUI FAQ, take time to read. - /u/DavidSonstebo (CEO of IOTA) Wow. Anyone who has ever built software knows that users rarely read FAQs (maybe 1-5%). Anyone who's ever made ANY product/service/contract knows most users don't read the fine print. I'm not sure if he's one of those hardcore backend guys who are oblivious to how humans use software, or maybe a bit autistic in his expectations of other people's capabilities/worldview, or is highly arrogant (rolling your own crypto fits this category well), or simply doesn't care because "everyone else is just not as smart as me". But regardless of the whys, that's simply no excuse in 2018 for pushing out very serious software, with real users, and significant time/money being potentially lost due to a complete disregard for real-life UX/UI. > IOTA was made for machines, not humans. This is no excuse either, it's a predictable expectation that new users will come in with their own preconceived understanding of how cryptocurrencies work - informed by how nearly every other currency works. So if your currency functions significantly different it's on the creator to communicate those differences clearly to the users.
  • hellbanner 9y ago
    "Anyone who has ever built software knows that users rarely read FAQs (maybe 1-5%). Anyone who's ever made ANY product/service/contract knows most users don't read the fine print." Expecting tools to work without reading the manual reminds me of "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." If the user WON'T read the FAQ, then the FAQ shouldn't exist. So how to educate an illiterate user?