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Once did some programming/networking work for a company that did the networking of a office sharing building that Coinbase was running out of. Early in my work
by chaps 11mo ago
Once did some programming/networking work for a company that did the networking of a office sharing building that Coinbase was running out of. Early in my work there I noticed that the company had its admin passwords written on a whiteboard -- visible from the hallway because they had glass for walls. So I sent them an email to ask that they remove it (I billed them for it).
Their fix was to put a piece of paper over the passwords.
What a time.
- Aurornis 11mo ago> So I sent them an email to ask that they remove it (I billed them for it) Sending unsolicited bills for unrequested services is a great way to make sure nobody takes your email seriously
- nightpool 11mo agoGP is saying that they were already one of Coinbase's vendors (they did the networking/IT setup for Coinbase's office). Whether you'd tolerate that kind of behavior from a vendor is one thing, but for an existing vendor relationship I think adding a few billable hours for "I found this issue in your network and documented and reported it for you" to an existing contract is not particularly unreasonable.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- aorloff 11mo agoMore likely, this is a spectacular version of CYA. By billing the hours, there is a paper trail so that when the inevitable breach occurs, you can point to having done the appropriate thing.
- Vvector 11mo agos/cloudflare/coinbase/
- sheepscreek 11mo agoOne day while driving, I received a call from a technical recruiter at Stripe. I told them about how much I admired their developer first approach, the Atlas program for startups, etc. Later that day, I looked up the recruiter on LinkedIn and realized they worked at Square, not Stripe!
- pests 11mo agoI do this all the time with Shopify / Spotify. The number of times non-tech friends have had to ask what Shopify is when discussing music and I slip up :/
- DonHopkins 11mo agoI have the same problem with Oracle / Lawnmower.
- pests 11mo agoThat's odd
- nightpool 11mo agoGah! Sorry, complete slip of the fingers. No offense to Cloudflare intended!
- Aurornis 11mo ago> but for an existing vendor relationship I think adding a few billable hours for "I found this issue in your network and documented and reported it for you" to an existing contract is not particularly unreasonable. Billing for random things outside of the agreed upon scope of work is actually unreasonable. It’s something covered in every contracting agreement I’ve ever been a part of. Maybe they could point to some contract that maybe would have covered it, but when your contractors start billing you for sending quick emails about unrelated things you didn’t ask them to look into, it’s not a good sign. When contractors bill for quick emails they don’t bill for the 3.7 minutes it took to write, they round up to some bigger number like an hour. Anecdotally, every time I’ve encountered contractors who started billing per individual communication that they initiated (not something requested) or started finding new things to bill us for that we didn’t ask, it was a sign that we were a target being milked for billable hours. Some contractors have a lightbulb moment when they think nobody is scrutinizing their billing and think they discovered an almost infinite money glitch by initiating new things that they can bill for. None of the good contractors I’ve worked with over the years would even think to bill for an individual short email.
- Tostino 11mo agoI hope some people post up outside your office. You probably have some secrets just laying around with that attitude. Could be quite profitable. "Let's defend Coinbase, that small little startup!" Maybe just stop being a boot licker? It seems pathetic from the outside.
- chaps 11mo agoThey initially hired me to do "network security" work. Another similar email-then-bill situation is me responding to them telling them why I won't, under any circumstances, figure out who wrote a Glassdoor review. A lot of it is about setting boundaries with the client. If I have a conversation with you a handful of times to remove password from a whiteboard and you don't do it, that's a big deal and would professionally impact me if something bad happened. Cause like, your client's clients includes Coinbase. Like another person commented -- I really should have just dropped them as a client because the professional risk was too high.
- bongodongobob 11mo agoThey are lucky they just got a bill and not a terminated contract. Consulting companies I have worked for would have dropped them immediately because we don't want clients with that kind of risk. Massive red flag that signals management is non-existent, incompetent, or checked out. That is egregious negligence.
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- hnthrowaway0315 11mo ago[flagged]
- 650REDHAIR 11mo agoThis doesn’t surprise me at all. Bitcoin, and really fintech as a whole, are beyond reckless.
- monero-xmr 11mo agoAh yes, I remember all the times they hacked bitcoin
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- jamespo 11mo agolol monero in username
- 8organicbits 11mo agoThere's a great index of hacks here https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?theme=hack https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?theme=hack It's breathtaking how frequent these are.
- happyopossum 11mo agoThat’s like saying the $USD was hacked when a bank gets breached.
- braingravy 11mo agoAre banks breached at the same rate as bitcoin brokers? I think that was op’s point.
- 8organicbits 11mo agoThat's a silly assumption to make. I'm clearly talking about the poor security offered by cryptocurrency, in practice, as evidenced by the frequent hacks impacting cryptocurrency companies.
- bhawks 11mo agoThat is a great ancedote. Not saying it is untrue, but it is definitely true that Coinbase has never lost customer funds while operating in an environment with 0 safety nets and being one of the most lucrative targets. This leak over customer data suggests that they should treat that with as much obsession as they do with their private keys.
- arcticbull 11mo agoThat's not actually true, back in the day Coinbase used Bitfinex. They were using them when Bitfinex got all that BTC stolen. Technically everyone, including Coinbase, lost assets in that hack. They were large and scary enough at the time to force Bitfinex to keep them whole instead of applying the 36% haircut, but I'd argue that amounts to recovery rather than failure to lose in the first place. [1, 2] [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/10/28/tether-and-bitfinex https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/10/28/tether-and-bitfinex [2] https://x.com/nathanielpopper/status/933130228175552513 https://x.com/nathanielpopper/status/933130228175552513
- bhawks 11mo agoThat's a pretty big stretch of definitions. Whatever operations Coinbase had with Bitfinex were either to support market making activity or as a service for Coinbase's institutional customers to directly access bitfinex via their platform. As I said, they have never lost customer funds in their custody.
- arcticbull 11mo ago> Whatever operations Coinbase had with Bitfinex were either to support market making activity or as a service for Coinbase's institutional customers to directly access bitfinex via their platform. How do you know?
- bhawks 11mo agoCoinbase didn't halt trading or withdrawals during the Bitfinex hack. Somehow I think Nathaniel Popper would have been able to put that fact directly in his NYT article instead of a throw away tweet if there was a material impact. Heck he wasted a paragraph quoting one of Coinbase's board of directors on the risks of unregulated exchanges like bitfinex versus Coinbase.
- eckesicle 11mo agoI very much doubt the veracity of this claim. I worked at Coinbase for many years and this runs completely afoul of the culture there. Even leaving your laptop unlocked for seconds in the office would have someone /pwn it in slack and get flagged by security. If there’s one thing they took extremely seriously it was data security.
- chaps 11mo agoYou're misreading my post with Coinbase-tinted glasses. My post is about the building that Coinbase operated out of. Not Coinbase itself.