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Binance exchange hackers steal bitcoins worth $41m
- czechdeveloper 7y agoThey were even thinking about requesting blockchain rollback (that possibly means making fork and paying to miners to follow that fork instead). If that would pass, that would really doom bitcoin as is.
- fabianfabian 7y agoRollbacks can be considered for shitcoins, in Bitcoin it is nearly impossible and very unrealistic.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- strasse86 7y agoI wonder what would have happened if the hack were 4 Billion instead of 40m, would Binance have the power to rollback
- DickingAround 7y agoNot nearly enough power or impact for that. The masses of miners who could roll back will not care for their plight and even billions stolen is worth less to the community and miners than making sure all transactions go through. For example; imagine what else is on that block chain they'd have to also kill? How many times exchanges been hacked and no re-dos? How could bitcoin keep it's status as super-solid if they allowed such things and it's only that status which gives it value? Totally untenable for bitcoin.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoAh, "hackers", of course.
- village-idiot 7y agoIt doesn’t help that the Binance founder was shouting about FUD on twitter before announcing the hack.
- s_dev 7y agoWhat does FUD mean?
- dmos62 7y ago> FUD is an acronym for fear, uncertainty and doubt. It is a marketing term that is often used to cast a shadow over a competitor's product when your own is unable to compete. FUD is a technique used by larger companies who have a large market share. The FUD acronym was first freely defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Corp, with this statement: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products." https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/F/FUD.html https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/F/FUD.html
- neilv 7y agoThe term became widely known among Internet techies a bit later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt#Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt#M... (I think this is an important period to understand. History repeats.)
- village-idiot 7y agoThe interesting thing about bitcoin exchanges is that the exchange effectively has a position in the market too, unlike traditional exchanges like the NYSE. They have to buy bitcoin from other exchanges, and if they get hacked they can lose it permanently. Edit because I’m throttled and can’t reply anymore: the “buying from other exchanges” is really not the lynchpin of my argument. The point is that these exchanges hold inventory and are vulnerable to bank runs and theft makes them much less stable than traditional exchanges.
- jstanley 7y agoThat's not accurate. They don't buy bitcoin from other exchanges. Why would it be any different to traditional exchanges? They hold funds on behalf of customers, and if they get hacked they can lose it permanently, that's true. But it doesn't mean the exchange itself needs to have a position in the market.
- buttcoinslol 7y agoTraditional exchanges do not, in fact, hold funds or securities for customers, or handle settlement, or a myriad of other things that crypto exchanges handle.
- village-idiot 7y agoSo .... where does an exchange get all the bitcoin they hold?
- jstanley 7y ago...from the customers
- village-idiot 7y agoI’m sure many do come from customers. But the idea that exchanges never buy bitcoin from each other to maintain their stocks seems quite a fantastical claim to me.
- ForHackernews 7y agoCue a dozen bitcoin apologists explaining how "bitcoin the protocol is actually extremely secure, it just so happens that every third person involved with implementing bitcoin-the-actual-token is either a crook or incompetent or an incompetent crook."
- joelvalleroy 7y agoHow can it be anything else? This even concerns individual account security "The hackers "had the patience to wait" and acquire access to a number of accounts before withdrawing the huge haul of bitcoins, according to Binance.".
- repomies68 7y agoIn this case customers in the end won't lose money, as binance can cover the loss from their own assets. And similar has been happened with most hacks in the past - as only hot wallet is emptied, the cost is manageable. Though IMO 7000btc is too much for hot wallet in any case...
- rich-tea 7y agoName a technology that isn't susceptible to crooks or incompetence. Bitcoin isn't worse than anything else in that respect.
- ebg13 7y agoAll questions of its own merits aside, how is Bitcoin still worth anything at all after so many hacks? Isn't a large part of value the security to know that you'll actually be able to realize it?
- repomies68 7y agoWell the thief didn't touch any other cryptocurrencies that were on binance. What do you think is more valuable, a currency that thief wants a lot or one that they don't want?
- 0x54D5 7y agoBitcoin itself wasn't hacked. They stole the keys from a server most likely. I don't think it's possible to harden a modern OS against some potential hacker on the internet. Especially when we know that 0-days are sold and traded. So the idea of putting $41m worth of Bitcoin in a single wallet is frankly frighting to me. We saw what happens with pwn2own. Now scale that up a few million USDs.
- repomies68 7y agoWell if 7000 stolen from hot wallet is something like 2% of assets and rest is in cold storage, then the risk is manageable. However I agree that 7000 BTC is a lot even if you are running a huge exchange.
- dylkil 7y agoThese hacks are only possible becuase of poor security on centralized exchanges. With p2p trading you dont have this problem. Theres a common saying in bitcoin communities - "Not your keys, not your coins". Never leave bitcoin on an exchange with a third party. In this case though binance will have to reimburse their customers.
- DJBunnies 7y agoBitcoin was not hacked. A 3rd party holding users' keys was hacked. Bitcoin still has value because it has characteristics that nothing else does.
- beager 7y agoI get that is part of bitcoin, not the protocol failing, personal irresponsibility etc etc. But I’m seeing less and less a justification for the deliberate lack of security in the bitcoin world. So a hack like this happens. Regardless of how it happened or who’s to blame, why continue to tolerate bitcoin? What is it giving you that’s worth the enormous mountain of precaution that you need to take to secure yourself?
- __s 7y agoI wouldn't say it was an enormous mountain of precaution for me to store my btc in my own wallet. It's kind of the point
- kalleboo 7y agoIt's in an offline wallet, right? And backed-up somehow incase the hardware wallet dies. And that backup made with an known-clean, freshly-installed, offline computer to avoid malware stealing it when you're making the backup.
- __s 7y agoNope, but it's still more secure than an exchange I expect to lose more from btc's value crashing than some elite conspiracy of hackers having sabotaged my hardware & somehow working out my private key which isn't stored in plaintext If I was holding a really great worth of btc, going the full mile of cold storage would make sense. At that point you're invested, quit kidding around
- beager 7y agoBut you had to know to do that. Semi-related, it’s wild to me that the best practice for a digital currency is the functional equivalent of keeping your money in your mattress.
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoI used to be a supporter of bitcoin but then I gave it some long thought and realized bitcoin will never make it as intended. The very essence that makes bitcoin appealing is what keeps it from being user friendly and functioning safely. Once you try to fudge with that, you undermine everything bitcoin is supposed to address. There is just no way around it.
- Proven 7y agoHahaha, crypto ICO of the year
- tyler109 7y agoHacks like that could be avoided if people would use decentralized exchanges and other DeFi dApps. The goal of the whole blockchain movement is to have no single point of failure. Luckily there is a whole suite of so-called decentralized blockchain applications coming out and building the next level of infrastructure for finance. This is a great newsletter to stay up to date on the latest decentralized applications: http://tokenvalley.substack.com http://tokenvalley.substack.com
- saalweachter 7y agoThe goal of, like, 20% of the blockchain movement is to have no single point of failure. 30% wish to avoid restrictions on the movement of money, 50% see it as money-making operation.
- sadness2 7y agoBinance is going decentralized imminently
- alexandernst 7y agoExplain to me as if I was your 50 years old parent: "What is that Bitcoin money and why I should use it if that 'exchange' thingy can loose it and they won't recover it back? I know my current bank will recover all my money if they get robbed." Take for granted that I (your 50 years old parent) have near zero knowledge about technology and I just won't use my own wallet and what not.
- kaffeemitsahne 7y ago> Take for granted that I (your 50 years old parent) have near zero knowledge about technology and I just won't use my own wallet and what not. Lol, given these conditions and unwillingness to change them you definitely shouldn't use it at all. Just forget you ever heard about it.
- SkyBelow 7y agoBased on my own parents, I wouldn't want you within 100 feet of bitcoin. I would also wouldn't want you being able to use a credit card online. I'm not sure why they are so against learning anything about technology yet so capable of learning new things not related to technology.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sofaofthedamned 7y agoMass adoption soon, yeah?
- dmos62 7y agoBitcoin is not well adapted for the technologically unsavy. By design, centralized exchanges should not be used for treating in Bitcoin. However, since Bitcoin does not support trading in the order of seconds, or other features necessary for speculation, like margin positions, speculators use centralized exchanges. They are aware of the subpar regulation and security standards in the industry and take the risk. Again though, this has nothing to do with casual users of the currency, they shouldn't be using centralized exchanges. The best, to my knowledge, decentralized anonymous crypto exchange is bisq [0]. The "unable to recover" feature is central to Bitcoin by design, because that way it cannot be censured or otherwise manipulated by non-majority actors. To finish, Bitcoin is not the most technically sound cryptocurrency around. It is a historically pivotal idea and implementation, but it's details are not the future of cryptocurrencies. [0] https://bisq.network/ https://bisq.network/
- granaldo 7y agoIt looks like the market is still able to tolerate such large hack https://www.coingecko.com/en https://www.coingecko.com/en price of all cryptocurrencies appear normal Who remember how big of a blow it was during mtgox incident. People forget...
- Traster 7y agoFrom wikipedia >Mt. Gox announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and the company were missing and likely stolen, an amount valued at more than $450 million at the time. This hack pales in comparison to the MT Gox incident. Partly because Bitcoin exchanges are more professional now, have decent security, insurance funds and real commitments. But it's also because this hack is actually relatively small.
- thisisit 7y agoBinance did a ICO raising $15 million. Their coins are now worth $3 billion. I find it surprising is that coin price is down just 4%.
- sadness2 7y ago> "Cyber-insurance is a common necessity today as identify theft, malware and cyber-attacks are frequently being performed against high-value blockchain and crypto-currency companies." Except they're not banks, and not intended to store your funds long-term.