Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

tangleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 162 posts

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#11

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly »

IntronExon wrote: post #7
loxias wrote: post #4

Confirming basically everything I already suspected about IOTA -- don't trust anything crypto related that's not written by a professional. "You're gonna have a bad time." [Edit to add this plug for Zcash! Made with real cryptographers ]

One priceless line from Ethan Heilman to support that observation: Probably best not to use informal stackoverflow answers and Wikipedia for understanding the security of your system. Yowza.

IOTA is one of the only crypto currencies in the green today, however.

Which is the real "yowza" imho.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#12

Post by QML »

comex wrote: post #8
merlincorey wrote: post #2

Second Preimage Resistance is important with most cryptocurrencies based off bitcoin because they are often calculated as a hash of a hash, which is what second preimage resistance is all about preventing predicting. In this case, the `curl` function is not being used as a hash function, but a different type of mapping. Unfortunately, that mapping is supposed to be psuedo-random and now it is known that it is not.

The "second" in "second preimage" doesn't refer to hashing something twice. It means that you already have one preimage for a hash (presumably because you started with the "preimage" and calculated the hash from that), and you want to find a second, different one.

In simpler terms, given H(x), it is impossible to find x’ such that H(x’) == H(x) in polynomial time.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#13

Post by loxias »

IntronExon wrote: post #7
loxias wrote: post #4

Confirming basically everything I already suspected about IOTA -- don't trust anything crypto related that's not written by a professional. "You're gonna have a bad time." [Edit to add this plug for Zcash! Made with real cryptographers ]

One priceless line from Ethan Heilman to support that observation: Probably best not to use informal stackoverflow answers and Wikipedia for understanding the security of your system. Yowza.

I know, right?

I read through the whole exchange and kept thinking "How are they managing to be so polite, to these rank amateurs who show no respect?" I probably would have informed them of the flaw, informed them when I was publishing, informed of a suggested fix then piped all the rest to /dev/null.

I also positively love the use of "push it to the limit".

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#14

Post by loxias »

hguhghuff wrote: post #6

Without reading reams of stuff over my head, why is this interesting?

Because IOTA is rekt, it has been for some time, and this is just what you should expect from people who try to roll their own cryptography, then get defensive when a notable real cryptographer points out flaws.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#15

Post by loxias »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #11
IntronExon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One priceless line from Ethan Heilman to support that observation: Probably best not to use informal stackoverflow answers and Wikipedia for understanding the security of your system. Yowza.

IOTA is one of the only crypto currencies in the green today, however. Which is the real "yowza" imho.

The market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#17

Post by oh_sigh »

loxias wrote: post #14
hguhghuff wrote: post #6

Without reading reams of stuff over my head, why is this interesting?

Because IOTA is rekt, it has been for some time, and this is just what you should expect from people who try to roll their own cryptography, then get defensive when a notable real cryptographer points out flaws.

Agreed. FD: I've 'shorted' IOTA in any way possible, mostly through altcoins which may actually deliver on IOTAs promises. As soon as I heard they were using ternary as some kind of competitive advantage, I lost all faith in them.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#18

Post by bri3d »

loxias wrote: post #13
IntronExon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One priceless line from Ethan Heilman to support that observation: Probably best not to use informal stackoverflow answers and Wikipedia for understanding the security of your system. Yowza.

I know, right? I read through the whole exchange and kept thinking "How are they managing to be so polite, to these rank amateurs who show no respect?" I probably would have informed them of the flaw, informed them when I was publishing, informed of a suggested fix then piped all the rest to /dev/null. I also positively love the use of "push it to the limit".

I quite enjoyed

> Did you receive the invite? We can also setup a chat with our ex-NSA post-Quantum hash function experts after we get the initial confusion out of the way.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#19

Post by hatsunearu »

oh_sigh wrote: post #17
loxias wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because IOTA is rekt, it has been for some time, and this is just what you should expect from people who try to roll their own cryptography, then get defensive when a notable real cryptographer points out flaws.

Agreed. FD: I've 'shorted' IOTA in any way possible, mostly through altcoins which may actually deliver on IOTAs promises. As soon as I heard they were using ternary as some kind of competitive advantage, I lost all faith in them.

somehow they claim ternery is easier to implement in hardware when it's strictly false in every way.
Post reply on HN