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Why I find IOTA alarming

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Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#41

Post by ryan-c »

whataretensors wrote: post #30
ryan-c wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring users to choose a password as a seed for their keys is a catastrophically bad vulnerability. Is that really how IOTA works?

Sort of. You have to generate a seed(like a private key) and use that to log in. The seed has to be random. Some used a dice, others /dev/random. I fully expect a wave of stolen IOTA to come from people who typed a 'random' code.

I'm tempted to write a cracker for shitty seeds people come up with, but given what I've heard of the design of IOTA, I'm afraid of getting brain damage trying to understand and reimplement their algorithms.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#42

Post by berberous »

asymmetric wrote: post #29
api wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Custom crypto primitives (ciphers, hashes, etc.) is a big red flag to me unless the designers are cryptographers. I know a fair bit about crypto. I would implement (and have implemented) higher order constructions like encrypted and authenticated protocols according to design patterns and principles put forward by competent cryptographers. I would never ever even attempt to design a cipher or a cryptographically stro…

> Actual deep cryptography such as cipher design is an area where truly extreme and very esoteric expertise is required to even get started I hear this every time cryptography is brought up. I think I get that it's hard, but people make it sound like it's the hardest thing ever . Where does this extreme complexity stem from? And what's the field of knowledge required? (Mathematics I imagine)

I think the problem is that it's tricky math, and there are so many possible subtle failure modes that make a scheme insecure (e.g., timing attacks). So in order to have a chance of making a new secure scheme, you should be an expert in crpyotgraphy (i.e., be very familiar with past schemes, why they worked, and common ways schemes fail that are non-obvious to someone without such a background).

Furthermore, given the number of subtle failure modes, a new scheme (even one designed by an expert) is likely to be insecure until shown to be secure by time and peer review (i.e., after it has been extensively attacked). Experts know this; amateurs assume that because they can't see a flaw, their new scheme is secure enough to deploy.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#43

Post by etunity »

PinguTS wrote: post #36
simias wrote: post #2

I feel like I'm missing one side of the story. I don't know much about IOTA but from what I learned reading articles linked on HN today IOTA: - Uses custom "ternary" crypto which has been shown to have vulnerabilities in the past. - Has software that doesn't include the basic function of generating wallet addresses, instead having some users rely on shady 3rd party websites and getting their coins stolen. - Does away…

Even the double spending problem is not really resolved. Just with the current theft, there are recipes posted[1] on how to recover the stolen IOTA by basically enforcing the double spending and trying to give your spending a higher priority than the fraudulent transactions had. That means fraudulent transaction could try this themselves and just need to exploit that race condition. That means a fraud needs to someho…

For the double spend to occur, you would need access to the seed ( private key) which the victims had and are trying to outrun the attacker in the case you were describing.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#44

Post by cesarb »

asymmetric wrote: post #29
api wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Custom crypto primitives (ciphers, hashes, etc.) is a big red flag to me unless the designers are cryptographers. I know a fair bit about crypto. I would implement (and have implemented) higher order constructions like encrypted and authenticated protocols according to design patterns and principles put forward by competent cryptographers. I would never ever even attempt to design a cipher or a cryptographically stro…

> Actual deep cryptography such as cipher design is an area where truly extreme and very esoteric expertise is required to even get started I hear this every time cryptography is brought up. I think I get that it's hard, but people make it sound like it's the hardest thing ever . Where does this extreme complexity stem from? And what's the field of knowledge required? (Mathematics I imagine)

> I think I get that it's hard, but people make it sound like it's the hardest thing ever. Where does this extreme complexity stem from?

I believe that it stems from the fact that it's easy to get wrong, and hard to know you got it wrong. Furthermore, other than a few special cases like one-time pads, there's no known way to prove that a cipher is secure, only that it's insecure. A cipher designer, therefore, must by necessity be an expert on all the known ways to break a cipher, so as to avoid all the known traps, and defend against the yet-to-be-discovered ones.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#45

Post by lettergram »

berberous wrote: post #9
simias wrote: post #2

I feel like I'm missing one side of the story. I don't know much about IOTA but from what I learned reading articles linked on HN today IOTA: - Uses custom "ternary" crypto which has been shown to have vulnerabilities in the past. - Has software that doesn't include the basic function of generating wallet addresses, instead having some users rely on shady 3rd party websites and getting their coins stolen. - Does away…

BitConnect, a literal Ponzi scheme that was repeatedly flagged to newbies as a Ponzi scheme they should avoid, had a $2.5 billion market cap last month before collapsing. While IOTA boosters probably have a story they believe that justifies the hype in their mind, just because it’s worth $6 billion in this market doesn’t mean they necessarily have a good one. For what it’s worth, of all the crypto people I follow tha…

We actually won't track IOTA or anything else we feel is too close to a scam on our website:

https://projectpiglet.com/

It's amazing how many scams are in the cryptocurrency space. To some extent even I personally even view Ripple and all the other completely pre-mined or tokenized cryptocurrencies (i.e. 100% centralized systems) as a scam. There's no guarantee manipulation of the underlying technology isn't happening. Essentially, removing the advantage of cryptocurrencies.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#46

Post by smrtfckr »

PinguTS wrote: post #36
simias wrote: post #2

I feel like I'm missing one side of the story. I don't know much about IOTA but from what I learned reading articles linked on HN today IOTA: - Uses custom "ternary" crypto which has been shown to have vulnerabilities in the past. - Has software that doesn't include the basic function of generating wallet addresses, instead having some users rely on shady 3rd party websites and getting their coins stolen. - Does away…

Even the double spending problem is not really resolved. Just with the current theft, there are recipes posted[1] on how to recover the stolen IOTA by basically enforcing the double spending and trying to give your spending a higher priority than the fraudulent transactions had. That means fraudulent transaction could try this themselves and just need to exploit that race condition. That means a fraud needs to someho…

You're conflating a lot of things here. Racing a fraudulent transaction to have a legitimate one confirm faster is not a double spend, like at all. Up until the moment one of the transactions confirms, no funds have changed hands. What you're also conflating is the fact that the hash collision has no influence on transacting funds in the first place. The DCI report recently released their vulnerability exploiting code which demonstrated, that in order to actually use colliding transaction hashes to create fraudulent transactions, the fraudulent party would have to have access to the seed at which point the whole thing becomes moot anyway. Adding to all this, the hashing function has long since been replaced, further compounding the moot-icity.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#47

Post by smrtfckr »

etunity wrote: post #43
PinguTS wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the double spending problem is not really resolved. Just with the current theft, there are recipes posted[1] on how to recover the stolen IOTA by basically enforcing the double spending and trying to give your spending a higher priority than the fraudulent transactions had. That means fraudulent transaction could try this themselves and just need to exploit that race condition. That means a fraud needs to someho…

For the double spend to occur, you would need access to the seed ( private key) which the victims had and are trying to outrun the attacker in the case you were describing.

Still not a double spend.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#48

Post by elmar »

etunity wrote: post #43
PinguTS wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the double spending problem is not really resolved. Just with the current theft, there are recipes posted[1] on how to recover the stolen IOTA by basically enforcing the double spending and trying to give your spending a higher priority than the fraudulent transactions had. That means fraudulent transaction could try this themselves and just need to exploit that race condition. That means a fraud needs to someho…

For the double spend to occur, you would need access to the seed ( private key) which the victims had and are trying to outrun the attacker in the case you were describing.

>For the double spend to occur, you would need access to the seed ( private key) which the victims had and are trying to outrun the attacker in the case you were describing.

So it works a bit like replace-by-fee on bitcoin? There is no mining on IOTA so what is the possible time frame? do you have more detailed technical information how this works? Thanks

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#49

Post by drcode »

api wrote: post #19
raitucarp wrote: post #17

I just copy paste from CfB's response, in case you missed it: Thank you. This article was useful for me, it showed what details of IOTA haven’t been highlighted yet. Below I list incorrect things from the article, if you find time it would be great if you paid more attention to them and shared your thoughts: “IOTA has no limit on transactions and therefore, it has no limit on bandwidth requirements or disk space.” —…

"Swarm Intelligence" - Okay, I stopped there. Can't throw something like that out without a link or commentary. Getting a decentralized swarm to implement transaction processing is highly non-trivial, especially when (as the OP highlights) incentives are delicate and the entire system must be extremely secure.

Especially true since parallelizing the processing of transactions is orders of magnitude easier than parallelizing STORAGE of transactions in decentralized systems- he's deflecting the criticism towards an easier problem.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#50

Post by smrtfckr »

imglorp wrote: post #38
etunity wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their argument for using ternary is that it is 8 times more efficient than binary and it is very important for iot devices which need to be have low energy consumption and a long life. Whereas the conversation from ternary to binary would add only a 10 % additional usage. They are trying to push the ternary to see if adoption can take off. All it needs is a few thousand logic gates on any traditional chip.if it doesn…

> 8 times more efficient than binary They're claiming this, for what operation? And similar question for the 10% usage claim. I suspect storage will be the same when you get done packing into machine words and storing those, yes? Unless they're not using all the bits in a word... Any independent references for ternary efficiencies for any operation?

IOTA is built for the internet of things and more specifically for sensors operating in the field. Perhaps with limited acces, perhaps with long intervals between service periods. Generally, you would't care about an 8 fold efficiency increase when you're hooked up onto a powerline but remote sensing equipment does.
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