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

forbes.com

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

#201

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

ohhhhhh wrote: post #199
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #156

A fun way to spend $600 million that you cannot launder anyway would be to put it in a smart contract and release it in portions to anyone who could solve a proof of work problem. Incidentally, the PoW problem would result in empty blocks being mined on Bitcoin, effectively executing a denial of service attack. The incentives should be adjusted so it becomes at least twice as profitable for a miner to mine empty bloc…

Dont you think the incentive to find a double spend flaw in bitcoin is large enough due to it's ever-increasing market cap?

This would not be a double spend attack, but a denial of service attack. If you spend $600 million worth of mining work, you can prevent any transactions from executing for two weeks (although in this scheme where you pay twice the block reward to defectors, only one week).

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

#202

Post by bgroat »

baq wrote: post #183
bgroat wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my big problem with anarcho-capitalists. God didn't come down and give us governments. We started without order and survival based on individual output. And every single living thing beyond a threshold of intelligence agreed that it sucked.

indeed. couldn't agree more. any anarchy is just one step away from despotism. when power lies on the ground, it doesn't take much for anyone to pick it up and wield it. you really need a strong government to preserve anarchy.

This is another big point.

"Liberty" is a wonderful lag measure, but a terrible lead measure.

The only thing you can really do to immediately create more liberty is deregulating. But in a world without laws, the only law is that of the jungle.

In which case we have a might makes right tyranny.

But as a lag measure you can do things like legislate worker rights, minimum wages, term limits, etc. With the long-term effect of more "liberty and freedom"

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

#203

Post by corobo »

pc86 wrote: post #136
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…

If you're going to just quote someone and pretend that serves as a cogent argument you'll probably want to pick someone a little smarter and more well-rounded than Spolsky.

Have you ever made a happy comment on HN? Not like ecstatic or anything just.. not this sort of thing

You alright?

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

#205

Post by brigandish »

jessaustin wrote: post #180
brigandish wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contracting out the running of prisons by the government is a recent innovation[1]. Are we to say that government was historically small in 1983 and has remained small and then notice that somehow there are more private prisons in the US now ? That's not a description I'd want to defend. The US is also not the only place where prisons are private[2], there's the southern hemisphere's Sweden a.k.a. big government para…

You claim to know what you meant, but that isn't clearly the case. GP's post was short and to the point. Your posts are long and confusing. We do have private prisons. As you note, they started under Reagan, in response to Reagan's "anti-crime" policies. Reagan is notorious for claiming to support small government and balanced budgets while actually spending us deep into deficit in order to purchase boondoggles. How…

> Your posts are long and confusing

What’s the average length of a post on HN and where does that post stand?

> How are your preferences different than Reagan's?

You just stated that he acted contrary to his claims, if your position is that I say I’m for small government but wish to spend, spend, spend, then I can see why you’re confused. Try dropping the assumption I’m lying, the principle of charity is a wonderful thing.

More to the point, as you are confused by sarcasm in the service of proof by contradiction, I’ll rephrase:

Would you claim that the government was historically small in 1983?

Is today’s government smaller or bigger?

How do both of your answers correlate with the increasing number of private prisons?

Finally, since your answers should be no, bigger, and bigger government correlates with more private prisons, what on Earth are you on about?

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

#207

Post by wil421 »

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?

Personally I see it as trying to recreate the banking and financial systems without all the lessons learned from hundreds of years.

Not to to mention anything dealing with money that isn’t reversible or doesn’t have a clear method for recourse is not something I want to put my money into.

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

#208

Post by wizzwizz4 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #175
bouncycastle wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like you are debating whenever the hack was moral or not. From a moral standpoint, it's like, if you accidentally leave behind your wallet with cash on a park bench with a lot of passer-by, then it's your fault for leaving it there and whoever finds it deserves to keep it. I'm sure you're familiar with the "finders keepers, losers weepers" saying... After all, it's in public, similar to how public blockchain…

More like a big sign says "A man named Jack may take this wallet", and you're named Jack, so you take the wallet, even though it wasn't meant for you. The smart contract is explicitly defined and on a public ledger. A lost wallet is accidentally left there. The context of it being available to be taken by anyone is not intended. There is no declaration of rules by which you may take it by the owner.

More like a big sign says “Jack may take this wallet, because it belongs to Jack”, and you happen to also be called Jack, even though you're not the Jack the sign was written about, but the sign enforcer only checks that your ID is valid and that you are named Jack.

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

#209

Post by wizzwizz4 »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #194
namdnay wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to be an absolute tool to use the poly network for anything serious ever again agreed > 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 I kind of disagree in philosophy here. If there's a bug in a bank API that lets me transfer funds to my account, I'm still "hacking", even if I'm doing exactly what the API lets me do…

Something that seems to be missed here, is that the bank has their physical servers owned by an institution, which you are exploiting. There is no physical server for Ethereum, the Smart Contracts don't exist anywhere. You are likely also violating the terms of usage of the API and various other legally enforceable contracts by breaching the API. If a smart contract included a terms of use however, it would be intere…

> There is no physical server for Ethereum, the Smart Contracts don't exist anywhere.

There is no one physical server. I think this is misleading.

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

#210

Post by 22c »

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #3

From what I recall, the hacker basically doxxed himself by accident by signing a message from his real wallet, linked to exchange wallets which presumably has his KYC info. From there, it was all over. Even if he could launder all that money, international authorities would find him. In fact, the writing style of his messages provide a pretty big clue where he is - Ukraine or Russia.

>Ukraine or Russia

How about Vietnamese?

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