Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

leibnizwasright wrote: post #9

mschuster91 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I'd say it's a combination of inside jobs and general poor coding/security practices. The inrush of customers has prompted lots of people to follow the "sell the shovels, not mine for gold" mentality and try to open up their own exchanges... and every exchange is a prime open target for any hacker because of the massive amounts involved.

In addition to all you said, I would add that some more advanced test frameworks/library a missing. There are only good ones for unit tests and UI test automation like Selenium, for integration tests there is a huge gap of decent test frameworks missing.

Post by Gargoyle » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #7

jacquesm wrote: post #4

Who says it was lost? I suspect quite a few of these 'hacks' are inside jobs to take coins from the general public and move them to the founders/owners/employees of exchanges. Yes, that's a pretty harsh accusation to make, but there is plenty of evidence that this happens with some regularity and the number of instances is high enough to make that claim. And it will continue as long as gullible people place 100's of…

Hmm. I'd say it's a combination of inside jobs and general poor coding/security practices. The inrush of customers has prompted lots of people to follow the "sell the shovels, not mine for gold" mentality and try to open up their own exchanges... and every exchange is a prime open target for any hacker because of the massive amounts involved.

Post by tlrobinson » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 1:23 PM UTC

leibnizwasright wrote: post #9

mschuster91 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I'd say it's a combination of inside jobs and general poor coding/security practices. The inrush of customers has prompted lots of people to follow the "sell the shovels, not mine for gold" mentality and try to open up their own exchanges... and every exchange is a prime open target for any hacker because of the massive amounts involved.

In addition to all you said, I would add that some more advanced test frameworks/library a missing. There are only good ones for unit tests and UI test automation like Selenium, for integration tests there is a huge gap of decent test frameworks missing.

Post by ryandvm » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 1:25 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #10

ryandvm wrote: post #8

One man's loss is everyone else's gain. If $500MM of a coin is irrevocably lost or destroyed, everyone just gained $500MM in value through an increase rarity. It's equivalent to the losers transferring all their coin to the rest of the network participants (in proportion to their stake).

> If $500MM of a coin is irrevocably lost or destroyed But the examples in the article are about coins being stolen, not lost or destroyed. Someone somewhere still has it and is presumably able to spend it.