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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

#231

Post by leetcrew »

panarky wrote: post #213
pjmorris wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe we should understand the existing system before advocating complete disruption. This is a great point. One name for it is 'Chesterton's Fence' [0] [0] https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/

In 2011 a new Bitcoin exchange called Bitcoinica launched. I deposited 100 BTC to test it out. First thing I did was to try to withdraw negative 100 BTC. It sent me 100 BTC, but instead of a zero balance in the exchange, it said I now had 200 BTC. So then I withdrew a negative 200 BTC, and it sent me 200 BTC and increased my exchange balance to 400 BTC. I contacted the owner and returned the funds and he sent me a 10…

I dunno whether it would be considered hacking, fraud, or plain old theft, but if you hadn't returned the BTC, this would be a clear example of exploiting a bug for financial gain. if nothing else, the operator should have some legal recourse to get their money back. if it can be shown that you did it deliberately, I don't think it would be unreasonable to consider it a criminal offense.

of course, this is not quite the same as misunderstanding some subtleties in an explicit contract. for example, the mere fact that I did not understand an auto-renewal clause in a lease does not get me off the hook for payment. although I might have some recourse if the lease stipulates something absurd (eg, notice to vacate must be hand-delivered to office in antarctica).

crypto does not necessarily mean you get to do a complete end run around the laws of sovereign nations. what it might mean, if designed well, is that you don't have to depend on those nations enforcing things.

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

#232

Post by Retric »

kaibee wrote: post #228
Retric wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX didn’t start from scratch. The goal for Falcon 1 was to be as conventional a design as possible and save money via vertical integration. By comparison many other companies tried to reinvent things by launching from aircraft etc.

> SpaceX didn’t start from scratch. The goal for Falcon 1 was to be as conventional a design as possible and save money via vertical integration. This is still starting from scratch. The design may be conventional, but you're benefiting from a modern approach to processes and design from the beginning.

This is one of those differences between engineering and software. For physical projects how much something is starting from scratch is kind of arbitrary. Knowing for example the ideal nose cone shapes and tradeoffs is a huge advantage.

I mean this is the best way possible, the Falcon 1 didn’t reinvent the wheel. They basically said what’s the simplest useful rocket for getting stuff to orbit copying as much of the design as they could, and built that.

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

#233

Post by bart_spoon »

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.

I don't think its disingenuous. The entire purpose of a contract is because neither party can trust the other to go along with what each other "intends" and therefore has to be written out explicitly in a legally binding document.

I think its an important point to be made.

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

#234

Post by simonsaidit »

nuclx wrote: post #221
ryanmarsh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have loved it if he sent every coin he stole to the burn address as a big fuck you.

Would have loved to see the discussion whether this amount of money would justify a hardfork to revert the theft.

Don’t think it’s possible in this case as this is a bridge between multiple blockchains that they have no control over.

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

#235

Post by wraptile »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #43

Someone recently pointed out that we have a "free market" in cryptocurrency, and are now spending years discovering why we have regulations, laws, contracts, courts etc. I love the idea of a digital native currency. But I also love financial protections that have grown up over thousands of years. The mints of each country could solve that tomorrow (is there a FOSS blockchain already that does a "we know there are 1 t…

> now spending years discovering why we have regulations, laws, contracts, courts etc.

Which is funny as for the longest time crypto's argument was that FIAT regulations/manipulation only protects the rich, not individuals. Well here we are talking about network that rolled back because some rich people lost money and another example of organizing one of the biggest manhunts in crypto history because of a code bug abuse. Yet average people who lose money are being told "code is law", should have watched your keys or made smarter investments fool!

Maybe medium is not the issue here...

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

#236

Post by nuclx »

simonsaidit wrote: post #234
nuclx wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would have loved to see the discussion whether this amount of money would justify a hardfork to revert the theft.

Don’t think it’s possible in this case as this is a bridge between multiple blockchains that they have no control over.

Well, the hack didn't involve an inter-blockchain transfer. It was internal transfers carried out at the same time on ETH, Polygon and BSC networks, so each of them would require a separate hardfork to repair this.

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

#237

Post by pcthrowaway »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #209
pcthrowaway wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a decentralized network. I mean it remains to be seen what jurisdictions consider smart contract exploits to be prosecutable, or whether they're even crimes.

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

#238

Post by carom »

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…

Isn't any hack using a system in the way it was written and not the way it was intended?

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

#239

Post by ALittleLight »

Crazyontap wrote: post #56
ALittleLight wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wondered about things like this with video games. I played RuneScape a while back and one of the things my brother and I would do is lure unsuspecting players into the wilderness to kill them and take their stuff. That stuff, RuneScape gold, weapons, and armor, has some real world value. We took it from other people, often by lying to them (e.g. "follow me into the wilderness, I'll show you something cool"). Cou…

Such interesting food for thought. You are deceiving people for your own gains but then you're not breaking any rules (i guess since i don't know much about runescape), and it would really matter if it was an NPC who did that to them.

Bringing NPCs into it makes it really interesting. You could imagine an NPC lying to the player in such a way that incautious players might lose game items that are worth real world money. That NPC, in a large MMO, could scam large numbers of people out of a large amount of value.

Is that wrong? Is it part of the game? Obviously there would be something wrong if you sold people your digital tokens and then took them away from players - you agreed to give them digital tokens and then took them away. But if an in-game character is making false representations as part of the game, that seems different.

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

#240

Post by mistrial9 »

RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #39
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.

> 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…

Is this the same guy that says that interns should work for free and that absolute rights to employees off-work time are OK ? from New York City ?
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