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French police free kidnapped Ledger executive
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoCrypto will not be ready for mainstream until effective game-theoretic countermeasures for this kind of thing are built into the protocols.
- heresie-dabord 2y agoWhen cryptocurrency comes to depend on all the trust anchors of the fiat monetary system, the naive reimplementation will be feature-complete.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoLike upgrading from a tube radio to a feature-equivalent SDR implementation, nothing will have changed. Except that having achieved feature parity, we'll then be in a position to consider new features which may not have been possible on the previous architecture.
- fsckboy 2y ago>the naive reimplementation will be feature-complete good point, but you're not taking into account the deflationary spiral
- pxmpxm 2y agoI don't think crypto people have a great handle on economics along those lines. "We artificially limited the supply so it can only go up; what's money velocity?"
- bpodgursky 2y agoOnly newer currencies you could lock your money into a smart contract, or just stake it, such that you literally could not transfer your money for a year (or more). Lower liquidity but would de-fang ransom like this. Alternatively, a smart contract could require large transfers to escrow for X months, and could have a secret poison pill such that it would abort after 30 days if you used a trap password. Edit: Given the downvotes I guess people just wanted to snark? I interpreted this as a technical question but maybe I misread.
- throw101010 2y ago> Only newer currencies you could lock your money into a smart contract, Bitcoin literally has timelockS (multiple kinds) built-in in its scripting since its first release...
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI'd believe that necessary primitives are out there, but it's not really enough to have a solution in theory. A crypto project will have to stop such things in practice before they can legitimately claim to have obsoleted the banks.
- throw101010 2y agoIf your intent is to lock funds for a specific number of blocks or a timestamp/block height you don't need more than these primitives (nLockTime, nSequenc, CLTV or CSV)... the first two are fields in any Bitcoin transactions, the others are scripting instructions. Some wallets allow to use these various flavors, from memory, both Bitcoin Core and Electrum offer some of these timelocks through their UI. The point was not that this alone would make bank obsolete, but rather that this isn't just something "new" cryptocurrencies feature.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agozooms out Oh I see, and I agree with you. Sorry, my mistake.
- thinkmassive 2y agoIt’s been implemented, for example: https://github.com/wizardsardine/liana https://github.com/wizardsardine/liana
- pieix 2y agoThis shows another of the many ways in which a having a trusted third party involved in your finances is actually a good thing.
- lxgr 2y agoArguably the feature that makes kidnappings for ransom unattractive isn't necessarily traditional banks being trusted, but rather that traditional bank transfers are usually reversible (e.g. due to a court order).
- JKCalhoun 2y agoThat and regulatory scrutiny, bank rules limiting large transfers or the fact they can take 24 hours, etc.
- lukan 2y agoBut not if the transactions are going to the caynman islands and then from there somewhere else etc. I believe. If you have a bank account in the same country, you also have an owner.
- pas 2y agoStill, it seems, the "barriers to entry" are much lower with crypto. (No need to send someone there to open a bank account, etc.) Though doing a kidnapping in the middle of France is pretty ballsy anyway.
- schoen 2y agoI haven't usually been enthusiastic about GNU Taler's "senders should be anonymous but recipients shouldn't" approach, but I guess kidnapping for ransom is an example where that policy might be beneficial.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- stogot 2y ago
- idiotsecant 2y agoYou mean like a multi sig wallet? Has been a thing on ethereum for about a decade now. There are also a variety of systems that allow trustless social wallet recovery and other nice creature features that are required in the real world. The programmable nature of ethereum makes these sorts of systems readily buildable. But its not bitcoin, so somehow its the shitcoin and the glacially frozen development environment that is bitcoin is what all the get rich quick cryptobros obsess about. I will never understand.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoSuch things don't count for much if they're not in use. The trick will be getting people to use them effectively. It's more of an education problem than a tech problem. Also it's not clear that that would work. If I got a call: > They're gonna kill me if you don't sign this transaction. I'd probably sign it rather than let my friend die to prove a point to the bad guys that you don't kidnap people on FooChain.
- idiotsecant 2y agoOk, so you make one of the other parties someone who has a fiduciary duty but not an emotional one. "We don't negotiate with terrorists" is a common enough phrase.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI still don't think it's enough. Then you just figure out who the fiduciary is and kidnap their kid instead. It's gotta be something where the coins are useless once stolen because you can't fake a convincing enough history for anybody to risk touching them. And not because maybe the cops show up, but because the recipient is equally concerned about finding people to accept their coins. The value of a given token has to be tied to the acceptability of its externalities such that a theft is just a destruction of value, not a reappropriation of it. Or at least that's the only way I can see it working. It's gotta be based on consent, not scarcity.
- Onavo 2y agoI suppose that's an upside to all the crypto companies being headquartered in Dubai and Singapore. The surveillance state in those places can rapidly track down all the attackers. They don't mess around when it comes to violent crime.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- roywiggins 2y agoHow does a game theoretic protocol stop someone extorting your friends into paying a ransom for your life? They weren't trying to get into his wallets, but getting his rich friends and relations to pay.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoCrypto aside, kidnappings for ransom are already embedded in a game theoretic protocol. The weights involved (e.g. the amount and probability of payout, the likelihood that you'll actually get to spend that payout, the penalty and probability of being captured, the likelihood of cooperation of victim and friends) are all determined via policy choices made by the state; these are things like regulating banks or making spending decisions re: policing and other such things. They determine how probable the crime is. The cryptocurrency proposition is that that solution can be improved upon without implicitly trusting the state. I don't have that solution myself, but I'm not convinced that it can't exist. We'll know they've found it when these things stop happening, and it starts feeling like the riskier thing is to keep your money in a bank. Or maybe what they come up with doesn't feel like money at all, who knows. When I try to imagine such a protocol, it involves a web of trust and crowd-sourced metadata such that people can refuse to accept coins which don't also come with proof that they're involved in activity that those people consent to. (A deficiency of dollars being that when I accept one I have no idea whether the loan that created it is for a venture that helps me or harms me, or whether the previous owner got it as a kidnapping ransom). In such a scenario, the ransomed coins become useless without a backstory that identifies them to the recipient as non-harmful. If that backstory becomes prohibitively difficult to fabricate, then perhaps the crime doesn't happen.
- qqqult 2y agoTransaction rollbacks. In this case the USDT ransom was blocked by Tether. Rollbacks for non-centralized tokens & networks goes against the goal of most protocols though, so it's unlikely to become the norm.
- kobalsky 2y agowhat do you mean? multisig with quorum has been supported by many hardware and software wallets for years. you cannot kidnap one of the signers and steal all the money. in this case most of the ransom has been blocked which isn't new. many of the major crypto heists ended with arrests due to traceability of the funds or unusable funds due to blacklists.
- dboreham 2y agoYou don't need to kidnap all the signers, just enough such that all the signers feel compelled to sign the ransom payment transaction.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoAre you proposing that these measures have made crypto just as safe or safer for the average person to work with than fiat? It's nice that there are tools available to prevent such things in theory, and it seems like there's some traction in the right direction, but what matters is whether it's safer in practice. I'd love it if that happened soon, but it doesn't seem likely.
- stiltzkin 2y ago[dead]
- jcarrano 2y agoAt some point "the rubber meets the road", i.e., you have to bridge the digital world and the physical one. Increase the probability that thugs are caught and increase the severity of the consequences. In the real world the ultimate countermeasure is bullets. All the rest is to avoid reaching this last resort.
- justonceokay 2y agoOnline the ultimate countermeasure is being a dog. If your currency brings you to the conclusion that you must be protected at all times with deadly force so you don’t get ransomed, I don’t know what to tell you.
- Scoundreller 2y ago> Under his leadership, the company has sold more than seven million hardware wallets worldwide, maintaining a perfect security record with no successful breaches of their devices. yeah uhhhhhh, what about all of their newsletter subs and device sales shipping data though? I wonder if he got one of the threatening ransom letters in the mail and didn't pay because they said it was a scam? https://www.bitdefender.com/en-au/blog/hotforsecurity/hacker-publishes-stolen-email-and-mailing-addresses-of-270000-ledger-cryptocurrency-wallet-users https://www.bitdefender.com/en-au/blog/hotforsecurity/hacker... https://old.reddit.com/r/ledgerwalletleak/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ledgerwalletleak/
- drewcoo 2y ago[flagged]
- whatsupdog 2y agoI have a significant amount of crypto and use a ledger wallet. Recently I noticed that the ledger app on my phone requires precise location access to function. It just hit me that ledger has precise locations and wallet balances of all its customers. It's just a matter of time when this information falls in the hands of organized crime. I have since then moved to another wallet and am thinking of selling my house and moving. I have taken steps to ensure that none of the apps that have my crypto balance do not access my location (graphene os with location disabled and always on VPN etc.) This news bothers me. Maybe the criminals asked for data access as well?
- FreeTrade 2y agoI believe Ledger already leaked customers' addresses. https://www.bitdefender.com/en-au/blog/hotforsecurity/hacker-publishes-stolen-email-and-mailing-addresses-of-270000-ledger-cryptocurrency-wallet-users https://www.bitdefender.com/en-au/blog/hotforsecurity/hacker... Probably the most dangerous and costly data leak ever. Can't believe Ledger was able to stay in business after that.
- whatsupdog 2y agoI don't live at the house where I ordered my wallet anymore. So that's a relief.
- zitsarethecure 2y agoHave you warned the people who DO live there?
- ZeroTalent 2y agoWe literally had to move, out of fear, and I am going to ridiculous measures right now because I work in the field. Luckily, we were renting.
- grajaganDev 2y agoIs it worth the impact to your lifestyle to work in crypto?
- function_seven 2y agoSo the article says, “[authorities] have also not confirmed whether any payment was made” and also says they’re looking for the kidnappers. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that ransom was paid and that’s how they were able to locate the Ballands.
- galleywest200 2y agoThis article claims part the ransom was paid but a majority of the sum frozen after: https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/david-balland-ledger-kidnapping-z3kx6svj0 https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/david-balland-...
- justinclift 2y agohttps://archive.md/peIe5 https://archive.md/peIe5
- qqqult 2y agoIt's even more stupid. The ransom was paid in Ether (ETH) which the kidnappers then exchanged to Tether stablecoins (USDT). Tether is a centralized company that can freeze and block any blockchain address from using the stablecoin that they issue and that's exactly what they did, they froze the ransom. We'll probably have more details about this in a few days just goes to show how you can't hide on public blockchain ledgers.
- bluecheese452 2y agoJfc can we not allow headlines like this? Fucking disgusting.
- fcarraldo 2y agoIt’s a factual description of what happened.
- axus 2y agoPretending that crime doesn't exist won't make it go away, and getting the information out there may help someone protect themself. One wonders if the attackers were paid anonymously in crypto-currency.
- d3d3d3f4f4f4 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoThe thread title, when this comment was posted, was "Kidnappers sever finger of Ledger co-founder David Balland". We've changed it now, in keeping with the site guidelines. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42819610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42819610.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoPosting like this will get you banned here. (The thread title, when the comment was posted, was "Kidnappers sever finger of Ledger co-founder David Balland".) You may not owe cryptobros better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- chatmasta 2y agoHow does the government of France decide whether your kidnapping is worth sending military tactical teams to rescue you?
- lxgr 2y agoDo you have reason to suspect that it's less than all?
- JKCalhoun 2y agoThat could be true. Normies don't often get kidnapped.
- shepherdjerred 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#European_Union
- lxgr 2y agoThe "statistical value of a life" doesn't mean what you think it does. It's essentially a measurement of how much, on average, people value their own live at the margin (i.e. how much are they willing to pay for a slightly safer car, how much more does a slightly more dangerous job have to pay for people to still apply etc.) It's not a political "cap on how much to spend on saving somebody's life". There have of course been rescue operations more expensive than that per person, and some medical expenditures exceed that cap as well.
- ZeroTalent 2y agoIt is used in public healthcare, for example, with biologic drugs. According to my rudimentary calculations, Spain has an 80-100B euro public healthcare budget. If every person who would benefit from a biological drug treatment received it, that would add close to 40% to that budget. And in the US, these drugs are much more expensive.
- portaouflop 2y agoFrom the headline here on HN i thought they severed his finger to get around MFA or use it to unlock some crypto store - turns out they just cut it off to show they mean business and they actually kidnapped him
- dang 2y agoWe've changed the headline to be the same as the article's, in keeping with the site guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) (Submitted title was "Kidnappers sever finger of Ledger co-founder David Balland".)
- Uptrenda 2y agoI've been thinking for a while that the current security methodology for wallets is not great. YES, that statement is extremely obvious on the face of it. But, I mean, think of some of the basic measures people take. This hardware wallet crap, okay great, your keys are kept somewhere safe and there's offline signing, but so what? Boop the users head until they give up the wallet. H4xt funds. We should be able to designed a robust threat model for cryptoassets using smart contracts that resists many kinds of attacks (including kidnapping.) This is hacker news so I guess people will want details on how this might work. I would probably start with how people use their money. If people have t funds, they usually aren't going to move it each day. So start with a fixed, daily spend limit. That's simple, to start with. Then past the spend limit, you might have extremely large, outlier transactions. This is an interesting phase because with actual non-shit-tier security you could have a secondary layer of confirmation. This could be based on different panic codes. Some could indicate that the transfer is being made under coercion and to notify law enforcement, some could indicate to accept the transfer and notify, and so on. You could outsource this to a third-party. Do you see what I mean? All this shit is easy to do with cryptography and actual good design. But no ones done it. I thought of this in the time it took to write this shitty post. Provable deniability schemes can be done to make it look like a wallet only contains a certain amount, too, using various private transaction schemes. This is nothing new. These attacks of being forced to do reveal keys and so on are things cryptographers have thought of for a long time. It's why you had Truecrypt have the fake volume. There is other stuff you can add to the security scheme. Giving different persons a key and making them sign their portion. Co-signing by third-parties (already a thing -- the scheme I like best is keys.casa). Many different ideas to allow for funds to seem like they've been "sent" then allow for revocation later on. You could have all different enhancements to high value, anomalous transfers like forcing the incumbent of transfers to take longer and have a clearing phase and so on. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to improve it even further. Just some ideas for how to stop attacks like this. Whenever I see headlines about hacked exchanges, hacked wallets, lots keys, broken transfers, etc... I just think that we're still at the stage where there's a fractal of shit and we have to do better. Make everything work flawlessly and without even thinking about it.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoIt's like you're saying, make crypto more like real money — like how transfers over $10K trigger regulatory scrutiny. From my understanding (nocrypto) fans of crypto like that it's not like real money.
- m3kw9 2y agoTo be fair it could happen to any rich person, it’s just crypto makes the transfer quick/easy and hard to trace if you know how to do it
- JKCalhoun 2y agoYou more or less just made the case for targeting crypto-rich people.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- d3d3d3f4f4f4 2y agoI'm fairly sure the criminals are aware already.
- m3kw9 2y agoIs as sure as a donut
- tim333 2y agoNormal bank transfers can be reversed and bags of cash often traced making them tricky for these purposes.
- petesergeant 2y agoI think I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often. Maybe I underestimate how good the police are at prevention of this crime.
- lukan 2y agoOr you overestimate how many competent psychos are out there scheming to do anything to make money. Doing a kidnapping and getting a ransom is probably not too hard, but being on the run forever afterwards might not be worth it to most. People with money can hire their own bounty hunters/or plain criminals to go after them afterwards. Or just announce a bounty high enough (in dark channels, your high profile security company has access to) so people will do the hunt for free. Most people like to boast about their action - so competent here means keeping quiet about it forever and coming up with a good excuse for why they have that money.
- petesergeant 2y agoBut there’s already a decent chunk of people committing organized violent crime. Cartels set up their own shadow cellphone networks and run submarines. Maybe there are just easier crimes that pay better with a lower risk profile
- petre 2y agoLike what, Russian and NK ransomware? Of course the perpetrators need to we physically in those countries, which is unattractive. Everywhere else the'll get caught.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lukan 2y ago"Cartels set up their own shadow cellphone networks and run submarines. Maybe there are just easier crimes that pay better with a lower risk profile" Indeed, selling drugs is apparently easier. And I can imagine the cartels don't want to risk their daily buisness, by kidnapping the wrong person from the west, as that would mean more heat on their buisness. But they surely do kidnappings and worse. Mostly in their fight for local control as far as I know.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- bombcar 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- felipelalli 2y agoThis ruined my damn day.
- hnbear 2y agoI remember a while back seeing a story from SE Asia about cops finding a guy walking along the road clutching a bleeding hand. Turned out thieves had robbed him off his car, which had a fingerprint reader so they'd taken a finger with the car. Found the article: https://www.theregister.com/2005/04/04/fingerprint_merc_chop/ https://www.theregister.com/2005/04/04/fingerprint_merc_chop...
- petre 2y agoThat's why I never use biometric autentication. After seing movies where the bad guys took the guy's eye to do a retina scan, you can imagine.
- walterbell 2y agoOver 10 years, ~100 physical attacks targeting crypto assets, https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks Physical security primer for Bitcoin (2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgPhPkS2yc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgPhPkS2yc
- ZeroTalent 2y agoThis is why I'm, within reason, anonymous online. This is a real threat.
- hdjjhhvvhga 2y agoIt's not easy. The marketing and lobbying is against this kind of attitude. You are met with active hostility. Facebook will delete your account if someone reports you as not revealing your actual personal data to them and will try to get you an official ID. You can't post on twitter without giving your phone number (even though Russian bots have no problem with that). But it's worth it.
- ZeroTalent 2y agoThat's true. I don't have any personal social media account with my face, etc.
- gunian 2y agothis reminded me of that one Drake song about sending fingers in FedEx boxes
- ripped_britches 2y agoThis is insane. So much disgust washed over me when I read about the finger. I can’t believe people are so evil. I don’t have any crypto but I’m worried about those who have it at scale.
- kmeisthax 2y agoMy advice for people who own crypto is the same as my advice for people who own guns: You shouldn't own it, but if you do, shut the fuck up about it. Guns and crypto both have unique properties: criminals want them, and they want there to not be a connection between their identity and the item they plan to do crime with. The obvious solution, for a criminal, is to steal someone else's guns or crypto, not for the value of the object itself but for the fact that it has your fingerprints on it and not theirs. It's a funny kind of identity theft.
- TiredOfLife 2y agoSame with cash.
- whimsicalism 2y agoit's easy enough to get anonymous crypto
- sixthDot 2y agoThe french gov position on cryptos is more like "we warn you that we cannot do anything so dont come crying".
- Chengdavid 2y ago[dead]