Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M • Hacker News Board

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#161

Post by gjulianm » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:05 PM UTC

nadam wrote: post #158

gjulianm wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an algorithmic censor-resistant, deflationary value network is a useful potential technology As the other commenter said, "censor resistant" is impossible to achieve. It's society the one that gives value to things, and society can decide to censor you and stop you from storing/getting value from that network. Not to mention that most blockchains are traceable, so it's not that difficult to know how money is flowin…

>Why? Are you a gold investor? I am. There are lots of problems with gold: 2-3% inflation, hard to store, hard to transfer, hard to divide, hard to examine whether it is really gold. BTC has some advantages (and some disadvantages). Proof of stake ETH have even more advantages (but also some more disadvantages). It is meaningful to research this, experiment with this, and not treat it as complete bullshit.

> There are lots of problems with gold

Most people don't deal with those problems because they use banks and official currency. If the target of the blockchain is to replace gold, then I don't know why people insist on regular people using it.

> It is meaningful to research this, experiment with this, and not treat it as complete bullshit.

Of course it is. But it's also meaningful to not treat it as the revolution as the crypto community does, or say that the people who don't think crypto is great is just uneducated.

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#162

Post by strgcmc » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:05 PM UTC

andrewaylett wrote: post #97

rocqua wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that hard to infer writers intent from: - function and variable naming - social conventions around ownership - stated intent by code writers - common sense By any reasonable standard, this was theft. Is a door with a pickable lock always unlocked? No, that would be silly. What makes using a key on a lock different from using a lockpick. Social convention, intent of the creator, common sense, the fact that on…

But if when there's a dispute you have to rely on a trusted third party to determine intent and arbitrate the contract, what's the benefit of having a smart contract over a regular dumb one and relying on a trusted third party to determine intent and arbitrate the contract if there's a dispute?

This is like saying, why have Uber use algorithms to match rider and driver, if you still need human customer support to deal with exceptions?

IMO, the answer is fundamentally that it expands the market (no more limitations like medallions, scales better than hiring dispatchers, etc.), and creates more demand overall (more people use these cars than would've used traditional taxis).

Of course, even the customer support gets automated away, until humans only need to deal with exceptions to the exceptions (that automated support was supposed to handle). So there can still be economies of scale and efficiency.

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#163

Post by pas » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:07 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #65

pmorici wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because there are similar mechanisms doesn’t mean they haven’t been improved on in some way. Lawyers and courts are notoriously inefficient if this implementation achieves efficiencies, even if the mechanisms are analogous, seems like progress.

> Lawyers and courts are notoriously inefficient Inefficiency implies that we can fathom a way to navigate the same space more efficiently. Do we? Or do we, for this mental gymnastics to work, actually have to change the space, to one where people are kind and the whole complicated system is less so? Certainly having lawyers in big business must be efficient enough that they beat not having lawyers or else the market…

If instead of lawyers running around with reams of paper and reinventing legal wheels every time (and then testing those every time in various court), the parties could use a website where they can customize the standard business contract that might help clear and speed up things. Ideally, in an advanced economy a kind of centralized/trusted entity, like the state could provide this, like it provides the system for filing taxes. Oh wait...

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#164

Post by thewarrior » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #159

hamburgerwah wrote: post #16

I haven't seen any evidence there was in fact a hack at all. A digital contract was used in a way that complied with the contract that the bonehead writers of that contract did not intend. That's it. If bad contract writers get to cry "hack" and beg for their money back there is no point to digital contracts at all. If someone had physically or electronically broken into systems and illicitly copied private keys that…

This is a disingenuous argument not written in good faith. You know very well that the contract writers did not intend for this to happen, and yet you are pretending otherwise just to make a provocative argument.

Who decides what was intended in a decentralized system where code is law ?

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#165

Post by bob33212 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:10 PM UTC

nadam wrote: post #154

bob33212 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you find it a good store of value for yourself that is fine, but you need to understand that value is defined by social norms not by technical features. Picasso paintings are currently a very good store of value. Gold has been a decent store of value for thousands of years. People bought beanie babies in 1998 because they thought the price would go up and stay up for a long time. Obviously they were wrong, but the…

I understand this. While you are right, there are some properties of these assets that can help us predict what could become a store of value: is it durable? is it easy to transfer? is it easy to censor? is it inflationary? also you can examine the network effect related to the asset. By developing new technical features, you can increase the chance of an asset to become a store of value. That's why researching proof…

Do you mean proof of stake? If so, yes there is potential for new technologies to come out which could cause crypto to have more real world use cases and then cause the value of crypto to society to be higher. But we have been hearing about how crypto is "the future" for 10+ years. At what point is this future actually going to exist?

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#166

Post by mcintyre1994 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:12 PM UTC

Matt Levine covered this in yesterday’s Money Stuff, it’s pretty interesting how parts of the ecosystem froze things and seemingly managed to stop them laundering their money.

Also it does look like they really did try to launder it:

> Tether froze more than $30 million in response to the hack, Tether Chief Technology Officer Paul Adroino tweeted.

> About an hour following Poly Network’s announcement of the hack, the perpetrator attempted to move stolen assets through the Ethereum address into Curve.fi, but the transaction was blocked. The hackers continued trying for about 20-30 minutes before an anonymous user sent the hackers a message on the blockchain that USD Tether had been blocked.

> The user told the hackers to try depositing the stolen tokens without Tether, which the hackers did successfully and they deposited all the addresses into Curve. The hackers then sent the anonymous user about $45,000 worth of ethereum for their help.

https://blockworks.co/hackers-steal-over-600m-biggest-in-def...

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#167

Post by dools » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:12 PM UTC

I can’t believe anyone can be into crypto and keep a straight face.

For all the libertarian bullshit about decentralising and no control and “you can’t shut it down” when someone actually makes off with a whole bunch of coin what does everyone do?

Relies on centralised control to shut the hacker down and cut them off.

SMFH.

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#168

Post by 127 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:14 PM UTC

mlazos wrote: post #35

hamburgerwah wrote: post #16

I haven't seen any evidence there was in fact a hack at all. A digital contract was used in a way that complied with the contract that the bonehead writers of that contract did not intend. That's it. If bad contract writers get to cry "hack" and beg for their money back there is no point to digital contracts at all. If someone had physically or electronically broken into systems and illicitly copied private keys that…

It’s so funny to me when everyone touts crypto + smart contracts as revolutionary™ then when you follow a system implemented with them to its logical conclusions you have analogs to everything that already exists. Lawyers to audit the contracts for bugs (and yes there can be bugs in a formally verified spec as well), courts to arbitrate disagreements, and an authority to enforce rules when someone finds a security ho…

My bank API sucks. It basically doesn't exist.

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#169

Post by Retric » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:17 PM UTC

cassonmars wrote: post #157

RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s important to remember that when you start from scratch there is absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job than you did the first time. First of all, you probably don’t even have the same programming team that worked on version one, so you don’t actually have “more experience”. You’re just going to make most of the old mistakes again, and introduce some new problems that weren’t in t…

The irony whenever someone references this article is they always seem to forget that he was arguing against the decision to rewrite Netscape, specifically, to create version 6, also known as Mozilla.

Looking back, updating Netscape may have been the correct choice.

Re: Poly Network hacker returns $258M after stealing $600M

#170

Post by acjohnson55 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:18 PM UTC

wesleywt wrote: post #96

jshen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how the crypto community encourages circumventing laws, UNTIL someone steals from them using their own “smart” contract then calls on authorities for help.

Can someone explain to me why HN is so anti-crypto?

Skepticism is maybe the definitive cultural trait of this site. And I think a lot of folks see gaps and hype in the cryptocurrency narrative. There is much to be skeptical of at every level of engagement.