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

500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

bitcoincharts.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 262 posts

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#211

Post by anigbrowl »

lubos wrote: post #47
buro9 wrote: post #39

From the mt.gox site: Huge Bitcoin sell off due to a compromised account - rollback The bitcoin will be back to around 17.5$/BTC after we rollback all trades that have happened after the huge Bitcoin sale that happened on June 20th near 3:00am (JST). Service should be back by June 20th 10:00am (JST, 01:00am GMT) with all the trades reversed and accounts available. One account with a lot of coins was compromised and w…

mtgox acts like a central authority. basically all these trades were happening in mysql database within the exchange between internal accounts, there were no actual bitcoin transactions.

mtgox acts like a central authority

Goodbye frying pan, hello fire.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#212

Post by michaelf »

marshray wrote: post #186
michaelf wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great place to start is "Applied Cryptography" by Bruce Schneier. http://www.schneier.com/book-applied.html Edit: Note, this really barely scratches the surface for building secure software. AC says how to apply cryptographic primitives correctly. It won't teach you how to avoid vulnerabilities specific to particular application domains (like CSS, SQL injection, etc...).

That book is old, and though still basically correct, there's much better ways to learn about the practice of developing secure systems. I recommend "Cryptography Engineering" by Ferguson, Schneier, Kohno which is a more modern descendant of Schneier's AC.

Looks like I need to update my bookshelf. Thanks for the recommendation.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#213

Post by nandemo »

sunchild wrote: post #188
encoderer wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand all the anger at the idea of rolling-back. Hasn't anybody trading bitcoins been watching how major equities exchanges have worked for decades? Take the flash-crash last year. Yes, if you were a lucky one who bought GE at $3/share then hell yes you wanted that trade to count. But to have an exchange it takes everybody acting in the interest of the group as well as themselves. The value to that over…

Just to be clear, I'm not taking a position, only asking a question: how does the exchange layer affect the fundamental goals of bitcoin, esp. the notion that no centralized authority controls monetary policy?

In principle, it doesn't affect that goal. An exchange doesn't control monetary policy, i.e., it doesn't set interest rates or increase the quantity of currency.

Of course, an exchange can affect the value of the products it is trading. Since Mt. Gox is the biggest bitcoin exchange, if a vulnerability is found then people might stop trading there, decreasing the liquidity and consequently the value of bitcoin. But this doesn't contradict the goal you mention.

As an analogy, if company ACME only trades on Nasdaq and there's a system problem with Nasdaq, some people will be scrambling to get rid of their ACME stocks so ACME's price will go down. That doesn't mean that the exchange controls the price of ACME.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#214

Post by william42 »

lutorm wrote: post #175
aquarin wrote: post #85

We shouldn't be surprised by this. This monetary have no authority behind it.

That this was Bitcoin was of no consequence. The hack was of a web site that happens to provide an exchange for Bitcoin, not the Bitcoin network. It could have been an exchange for anything.

The proliferation of amateurs with even less security than Sony is a predictable side effect of decentralization.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#215

Post by saalweachter »

tlrobinson wrote: post #61
weavejester wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that people with large amounts of bitcoin don't have better security measures. For that amount of money, I'd consider securing the private key in a safety deposit box. Probably several safety deposit boxes, actually.

They apparently had 500k BTC in their MtGox account, which is insane. Unless they were actively trading all of that they should have withdrawn from MtGox to the BitCoin network.

I keep reading about people only being able to take a small number (50 or 80 BTC) out of the market at once, which is why the hacker couldn't do the same.

If that is true, then once you have your 500k BTC in the exchange, it will take you over a decade to get them out, either as cash or as bitcoins.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#217

Post by jfoutz »

icebraining wrote: post #205
jonknee wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happens when there's no regulation...

You must not have been following the news: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2079431/citibank-ha... It happens everywhere.

Would you be willing and able to point out the regulation violated?

http://www.federalreserve.gov/bankinforeg/reglisting.htm

Cause, I don't think they broke any rules. Are they even required to keep those details secret? It's pretty clear marketing agencies can buy that data, so i don't think it's any sort of violation of privacy policy.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#218

Post by chmike »

william42 wrote: post #214
lutorm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That this was Bitcoin was of no consequence. The hack was of a web site that happens to provide an exchange for Bitcoin, not the Bitcoin network. It could have been an exchange for anything.

The proliferation of amateurs with even less security than Sony is a predictable side effect of decentralization.

I have more trust in Darwin's law than banks, banking rules and centralized control to solve this issue.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#219

Post by zaphar »

ryepdx wrote: post #123
danielsoneg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? It's by far the largest BTC exchange - by a factor of ~50 or so. If you want to exchange more than a couple hundred BTC, they're the only game in town right now.

Yes, but they're the only big game in town not because they held a gun to anyone's head or threatened to throw their customers in jail if they dared to start using another exchange, but because they provided the best service. They did not engage in coercion. This is the heart of the free market and of anarchy.

It is the heart of the free market but it is not the heart of anarchy. Anarchy would happily employ coercion. After all theres no one to stop you when anarchy reigns. In anarchy the big dog wins until a bigger dog comes along.

Please don't conflate the free market with anarchy.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#220

Post by gcb »

icebraining wrote: post #205
jonknee wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happens when there's no regulation...

You must not have been following the news: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2079431/citibank-ha... It happens everywhere.

icebraining, that's called irony

...i hope

Post reply on HN