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>Or whoever created the puzzles leaking their information. Or getting hacked. This is super common among people who are known to have high value wallets. Betwe

>Or whoever created the puzzles leaking their information. Or getting hacked. This is super common among people who are known to have high value wallets. Between physical attacks and zero days in everyday software, there's no chance to stay safe when you put that kind of target on your back.

owl57 2y ago
Is it likely that these particular private keys were wiped ~immediately after creation?
Powdering7082 2y ago
> there's no chance to stay safe when you put that kind of target on your back. Vitalik Buterin seems to be a counter example here, his net worth peaked around $1.46 billion. He has some interesting writing on how he stays secure. At one point the SHIBA token sent a huge amount of funds to his cold wallet and he details what he did to securely access those funds: https://decrypt.co/91000/ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-dumped-7-billion-shib-how-why https://decrypt.co/91000/ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-du... > The funds, he said, were initially in a cold wallet in the form of two numbers written on separate pieces of paper. Buterin said he had to combine the two numbers to get the private key. "One of those numbers was with me; the other number was with my family in Canada," he said. "So I had to call up my family in Canada and tell them to read their number to me." > Buterin said that he entered the numbers into the computer he purchased from Target after putting the two numbers together. "I sent my ETH out by generating a transaction and then on a computer that I bought from Tarjay [Target] for about $300 bucks for just this purpose." > Before disconnecting the laptop from the internet entirely, Buterin said he downloaded a program to generate QR codes. After generating the Ethereum transaction, he scanned the QR code with his phone, copied it to the laptop, and then put it into etherscan.io/push Tx. Finally, Buterin said he began sending out the tokens.
- LikesPwsh 2y ago
  Vitalik got indirectly pwned by the infamous DAO smart contract hack, but had the social clout to pause/rollback the supposedly decentralised/immutable Blockchain. Maybe not the best example of cryptographic security.
  - pas 2y ago
    how would anything ever be immutable if people can reassign the symbol/pointer/name? the DAO hack happened, immutably, no one disputes it. the hashes and blocks and transactions are well-known. so there was a "schism", that explicitly validates the fact that without this large-scale cooperation, without the redefinition of what Ethereum is, it would be still be what is on that other branch. these both provide evidence for the immutably and decentralization.
    - akoboldfrying 2y ago
      It wasn't a rollback in much the same way that UPDATEing a row in an MVCC database doesn't actually overwrite that row, it just creates a new version of it that becomes the version that people tend to care about from that point on.
    - pcthrowaway 2y ago
      The version of Ethereum after the hack became known as Ethereum Classic. The Ethereum foundation decided to go with a fork of the chain prior to the hack, and pretty much all the devs and the community followed. The value of Ethereum is entirely derived from what people are willing to pay for it, and community is a big part of that. The version of Ethereum which underwent the attack didn't cease to exist, and people can still use it; it's just called "Ethereum classic" now, whereas people who want to use the version of the chain that didn't suffer from the hack can use that version (generally understood to be "Ethereum". The fact that there are far fewer users of Ethereum Classic (and the market cap is significantly lower) is a testament to how much people care about the community which chose to follow a different history of the Ethereum network.
      - bhaak 2y ago
        Small nitpick. In both chains the attack happened. But in one chain the whole community decided to disown the attacker by injecting hard coded transactions that would send the Ethers back to their original owners.
  - vessenes 2y ago
- mistrial9 2y ago
  Target stores were early adopters of every-shopper profiling. Target has cameras on the purchase area, and have been known to refuse cash.
  - meowster 2y ago
    I've heard about Target's tracking from reputable sources, but never of them refusing to take cash, do you have a reputable source for that?
    - mistrial9 2y ago
      yes, in California, City of Albany, Target store near San Francisco, refused to take cash at the checkout not long ago.
      - 14 2y ago
        I saw a few places stop accepting cash during covid days but most have started accepting it again. The one place that I frequent that still doesn’t is the haircut store in my town. There are not a lot of options so it’s card or go somewhere that charges almost double.
        sfn42 2y ago
        What's weird to me is that you guys frame it as a bad thing. For me as a European it's the opposite, I'm in trouble if someone doesn't take card. Nobody carries cash any more. I think pretty much all stores still accept cash, but most people here just never withdraw any. It's pretty much just old people and people buing illegal stuff
        14 2y ago
        What you deem illegal may not be the next day. Being able to do illegal things is actually healthy for a society. Otherwise we already have the technology to stop all crimes world wide. We could force every person to wear a body cam at all times and failure to do so results in life in prison. Done crime solved. But that would not be good no one wants that. But if we did stop every crime imagine how the world would be. Imagine 60 years ago we could stop all crime. Any homosexual would be found and persecuted. Anyone who became a whistleblower would be found a jailed. There are just so many reasons why being able to break the law is fundamental for a society to progress and thrive. So this is why cash IS a good thing. Sex workers want to do their thing and Johns want to not be instantly called out for using sex workers. The people who long ago realized magic mushrooms work to cure depression want to be be able to get it without being jailed. Now, here in Canada, sex work is protected and magic mushrooms will not get you thrown in jail. So even though you may deem things illegal, I ask you think of a greater good that cash allows as everything being digital reveals a lot of information that not all people are comfortable their government knowing. Be it homosexuals, depressed people trying illicit treatments, or extremely lonely discarded individuals reaching out to sex workers verses suicide. Lastly according to a quick google search and a few spots I looked at, most only showing 2022 as latest information, most point of sale transactions in Europe are made with cash not card [1]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/786680/share-of-cash-transactions-at-pos-in-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/786680/share-of-cash-tra...
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  Is this basically saying he sent all the ETH out of his "account" (presumably to another one that was pre-generated & pre-shared half the private key with his family), so that it just had the Shiba tokens left in it? Then he didn't have to worry about the Shiba related transactions affecting his ETH?
  - Powdering7082 2y ago
    Unfortunately I couldn't find a better writeup, although I remember it. The basic problem was that they transferred into his "cold wallet" https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/hot-wallet-vs-cold-wallet?msockid=38233ea6a5c3681e10d32c78a4bd69ab https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/hot-wallet-vs-c... He didn't want to have the signal be that he was happy holding SHIBA and was uncomfortable with that much power & control over SHIBA. So he wanted to be able to transfer his SHIBA out to a hot wallet and then burn most of it and donate the rest, given the amount of money involved he took extra steps like buying a new computer to generate the new keys, airgapping it from the internet while it held the cold wallet keys etc
- EGreg 2y ago
  I recommend to everyone to take their 12 words, write em 3 times on a piece of paper, cut it into 9 pieces and hide them in places only you’d know
  - bhaak 2y ago
    So nobody will be able to recover them if you are hit by a bus or develop dementia? This problem is harder if you want to pass on your crypto after you can't use them anymore.
    - EGreg 2y ago
      That's exactly right If you want to enable recovery, you should give ownership of things to smart contracts, which enable things like succession rules and a heatbeat checkin etc. Public/private keys are not designed to solve that kind of governance problem.
  - evilfred 2y ago
    or just use a more user friendly and accessible currency and banking system

owl57 2y ago

Is it likely that these particular private keys were wiped ~immediately after creation?

Powdering7082 2y ago

> there's no chance to stay safe when you put that kind of target on your back. Vitalik Buterin seems to be a counter example here, his net worth peaked around $1.46 billion. He has some interesting writing on how he stays secure. At one point the SHIBA token sent a huge amount of funds to his cold wallet and he details what he did to securely access those funds: https://decrypt.co/91000/ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-dumped-7-billion-shib-how-why https://decrypt.co/91000/ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-du... > The funds, he said, were initially in a cold wallet in the form of two numbers written on separate pieces of paper. Buterin said he had to combine the two numbers to get the private key. "One of those numbers was with me; the other number was with my family in Canada," he said. "So I had to call up my family in Canada and tell them to read their number to me." > Buterin said that he entered the numbers into the computer he purchased from Target after putting the two numbers together. "I sent my ETH out by generating a transaction and then on a computer that I bought from Tarjay [Target] for about $300 bucks for just this purpose." > Before disconnecting the laptop from the internet entirely, Buterin said he downloaded a program to generate QR codes. After generating the Ethereum transaction, he scanned the QR code with his phone, copied it to the laptop, and then put it into etherscan.io/push Tx. Finally, Buterin said he began sending out the tokens.

LikesPwsh 2y ago
Vitalik got indirectly pwned by the infamous DAO smart contract hack, but had the social clout to pause/rollback the supposedly decentralised/immutable Blockchain. Maybe not the best example of cryptographic security.
- pas 2y ago
  how would anything ever be immutable if people can reassign the symbol/pointer/name? the DAO hack happened, immutably, no one disputes it. the hashes and blocks and transactions are well-known. so there was a "schism", that explicitly validates the fact that without this large-scale cooperation, without the redefinition of what Ethereum is, it would be still be what is on that other branch. these both provide evidence for the immutably and decentralization.
  - akoboldfrying 2y ago
    It wasn't a rollback in much the same way that UPDATEing a row in an MVCC database doesn't actually overwrite that row, it just creates a new version of it that becomes the version that people tend to care about from that point on.
  - pcthrowaway 2y ago
    The version of Ethereum after the hack became known as Ethereum Classic. The Ethereum foundation decided to go with a fork of the chain prior to the hack, and pretty much all the devs and the community followed. The value of Ethereum is entirely derived from what people are willing to pay for it, and community is a big part of that. The version of Ethereum which underwent the attack didn't cease to exist, and people can still use it; it's just called "Ethereum classic" now, whereas people who want to use the version of the chain that didn't suffer from the hack can use that version (generally understood to be "Ethereum". The fact that there are far fewer users of Ethereum Classic (and the market cap is significantly lower) is a testament to how much people care about the community which chose to follow a different history of the Ethereum network.
    - bhaak 2y ago
      Small nitpick. In both chains the attack happened. But in one chain the whole community decided to disown the attacker by injecting hard coded transactions that would send the Ethers back to their original owners.
- vessenes 2y ago
mistrial9 2y ago
Target stores were early adopters of every-shopper profiling. Target has cameras on the purchase area, and have been known to refuse cash.
- meowster 2y ago
  I've heard about Target's tracking from reputable sources, but never of them refusing to take cash, do you have a reputable source for that?
  - mistrial9 2y ago
    yes, in California, City of Albany, Target store near San Francisco, refused to take cash at the checkout not long ago.
    - 14 2y ago
      I saw a few places stop accepting cash during covid days but most have started accepting it again. The one place that I frequent that still doesn’t is the haircut store in my town. There are not a lot of options so it’s card or go somewhere that charges almost double.
      - sfn42 2y ago
        What's weird to me is that you guys frame it as a bad thing. For me as a European it's the opposite, I'm in trouble if someone doesn't take card. Nobody carries cash any more. I think pretty much all stores still accept cash, but most people here just never withdraw any. It's pretty much just old people and people buing illegal stuff
        14 2y ago
        What you deem illegal may not be the next day. Being able to do illegal things is actually healthy for a society. Otherwise we already have the technology to stop all crimes world wide. We could force every person to wear a body cam at all times and failure to do so results in life in prison. Done crime solved. But that would not be good no one wants that. But if we did stop every crime imagine how the world would be. Imagine 60 years ago we could stop all crime. Any homosexual would be found and persecuted. Anyone who became a whistleblower would be found a jailed. There are just so many reasons why being able to break the law is fundamental for a society to progress and thrive. So this is why cash IS a good thing. Sex workers want to do their thing and Johns want to not be instantly called out for using sex workers. The people who long ago realized magic mushrooms work to cure depression want to be be able to get it without being jailed. Now, here in Canada, sex work is protected and magic mushrooms will not get you thrown in jail. So even though you may deem things illegal, I ask you think of a greater good that cash allows as everything being digital reveals a lot of information that not all people are comfortable their government knowing. Be it homosexuals, depressed people trying illicit treatments, or extremely lonely discarded individuals reaching out to sex workers verses suicide. Lastly according to a quick google search and a few spots I looked at, most only showing 2022 as latest information, most point of sale transactions in Europe are made with cash not card [1]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/786680/share-of-cash-transactions-at-pos-in-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/786680/share-of-cash-tra...
Scoundreller 2y ago
Is this basically saying he sent all the ETH out of his "account" (presumably to another one that was pre-generated & pre-shared half the private key with his family), so that it just had the Shiba tokens left in it? Then he didn't have to worry about the Shiba related transactions affecting his ETH?
- Powdering7082 2y ago
  Unfortunately I couldn't find a better writeup, although I remember it. The basic problem was that they transferred into his "cold wallet" https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/hot-wallet-vs-cold-wallet?msockid=38233ea6a5c3681e10d32c78a4bd69ab https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/hot-wallet-vs-c... He didn't want to have the signal be that he was happy holding SHIBA and was uncomfortable with that much power & control over SHIBA. So he wanted to be able to transfer his SHIBA out to a hot wallet and then burn most of it and donate the rest, given the amount of money involved he took extra steps like buying a new computer to generate the new keys, airgapping it from the internet while it held the cold wallet keys etc
EGreg 2y ago
I recommend to everyone to take their 12 words, write em 3 times on a piece of paper, cut it into 9 pieces and hide them in places only you’d know
- bhaak 2y ago
  So nobody will be able to recover them if you are hit by a bus or develop dementia? This problem is harder if you want to pass on your crypto after you can't use them anymore.
  - EGreg 2y ago
    That's exactly right If you want to enable recovery, you should give ownership of things to smart contracts, which enable things like succession rules and a heatbeat checkin etc. Public/private keys are not designed to solve that kind of governance problem.
- evilfred 2y ago
  or just use a more user friendly and accessible currency and banking system