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In practice bitcoin's very anonymity makes it a more attractive target for theft Also the fact that the people making software seem incompetant when it comes t

by rmc 13y ago

In practice bitcoin's very anonymity makes it a more attractive target for theft Also the fact that the people making software seem incompetant when it comes to technology.

danielweber 13y ago
Eh, I'm not sure they are incompetent. They are, however, swimming in a sea where the slightest mistake is lethal. Some people see these stories and think "ha, I could do better than that!" Other people see these stories and think "can I really be sure that I haven't made even one fatal mistake?" All software engineers write bugs. All software engineers write security holes. For most of us, the fatal flaw doesn't irrevocably wipe out a bunch of people's life savings.
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  >Eh, I'm not sure they are incompetent. Some of these guys are indisputably incompetent with regard to the software and services they are building. While it's true that all software can have bugs, these are extraordinarily unsophisticated attacks that any non-hacker can exploit by, say, refreshing his browser in rapid succession. That is, there is a sliding scale with regard to the level of competence imputed to, say, a certain type of bug. And, this wasn't a simple coding error (which, can be more easily forgiven). This was a fundamental oversight in the overall approach to the software, with regard to a critical operation. And it involves such basic concepts as transactions and race conditions. While eliminating the latter can be difficult to get right, it appears that they didn't even consider the fact that they could occur. I am one of the guys in your group who thinks "have I considered everything?" In fact, I would be inclined to believe that I haven't. Perhaps that's pessimism or just realism, given what I've seen from determined hackers attacking my business over the years. So, I can certainly give a pass to oversights or errors. But, at a certain point, the nature of some oversights or errors are indicative of the fact that the developer(s) are not competent, at least with regard to the domain.
brudgers 13y ago
Any incompetence is not so much technical as commercial. The problem isn't bad code, it's lack of a backup plan- e.g. insurance and reinsurance. Among bitcoin holders there seems to be a tendency to assume the technical sophistication of bitcoin mining and blockchains somehow perfects operations involving the buying and selling of bitcoin. The analogy I would draw is to notes which can be exchanged for gold and backed by a central government. It can be the case that notes are reliably exchangeable for gold and also the case that a bank takes these notes for deposit without writing down the deposit in a ledger. Likewise the bank allows withdrawal of notes, again without writing them down. If An individual makes the decision to deposit notes with that bank based on the certainty the notes may be exchanged for gold, they have used the wrong set of facts as the basis of their decision. At best the robustness of bitcoin is independent of the robustness of bitcoin businesses. My suspicion is that in practice their is a negative correlation because stolen bitcoin are largely unrecoverable and do not trade at a discount.

by rmc 13y ago

In practice bitcoin's very anonymity makes it a more attractive target for theft Also the fact that the people making software seem incompetant when it comes to technology.

danielweber 13y ago

Eh, I'm not sure they are incompetent. They are, however, swimming in a sea where the slightest mistake is lethal. Some people see these stories and think "ha, I could do better than that!" Other people see these stories and think "can I really be sure that I haven't made even one fatal mistake?" All software engineers write bugs. All software engineers write security holes. For most of us, the fatal flaw doesn't irrevocably wipe out a bunch of people's life savings.

unclebucknasty 13y ago
>Eh, I'm not sure they are incompetent. Some of these guys are indisputably incompetent with regard to the software and services they are building. While it's true that all software can have bugs, these are extraordinarily unsophisticated attacks that any non-hacker can exploit by, say, refreshing his browser in rapid succession. That is, there is a sliding scale with regard to the level of competence imputed to, say, a certain type of bug. And, this wasn't a simple coding error (which, can be more easily forgiven). This was a fundamental oversight in the overall approach to the software, with regard to a critical operation. And it involves such basic concepts as transactions and race conditions. While eliminating the latter can be difficult to get right, it appears that they didn't even consider the fact that they could occur. I am one of the guys in your group who thinks "have I considered everything?" In fact, I would be inclined to believe that I haven't. Perhaps that's pessimism or just realism, given what I've seen from determined hackers attacking my business over the years. So, I can certainly give a pass to oversights or errors. But, at a certain point, the nature of some oversights or errors are indicative of the fact that the developer(s) are not competent, at least with regard to the domain.

brudgers 13y ago

Any incompetence is not so much technical as commercial. The problem isn't bad code, it's lack of a backup plan- e.g. insurance and reinsurance. Among bitcoin holders there seems to be a tendency to assume the technical sophistication of bitcoin mining and blockchains somehow perfects operations involving the buying and selling of bitcoin. The analogy I would draw is to notes which can be exchanged for gold and backed by a central government. It can be the case that notes are reliably exchangeable for gold and also the case that a bank takes these notes for deposit without writing down the deposit in a ledger. Likewise the bank allows withdrawal of notes, again without writing them down. If An individual makes the decision to deposit notes with that bank based on the certainty the notes may be exchanged for gold, they have used the wrong set of facts as the basis of their decision. At best the robustness of bitcoin is independent of the robustness of bitcoin businesses. My suspicion is that in practice their is a negative correlation because stolen bitcoin are largely unrecoverable and do not trade at a discount.