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FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

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611–620 of 890 posts

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, what you're saying is that some hackers are siphoning all the "funds" for no reason at all? Or maybe, if they are hackers they can use/launder those in some way or another, but if this is SBF behind a mask then he can't? I am far from an expert about money laundering techniques, but I find it hard to believe that it is impossible to launder, given the context.

There's probably something these guys know that ordinary HN people don't know about how to extract the money. Perhaps there's a jurisdiction where it's made a lot easier.

They don't even have to know much. They will be approached by people who does.

Money laundering can be lossy and even very lossy, the result will always be better than zero.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#612
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBF takes "full responsibility".

Taking full responsibility would be liquidating his assets to make all customers as whole as possible, even if it leaves him destitute. Lack of responsibility/consequences for the capitalist class is the root cause for many of the social problems we have today. It's not OK that we hugely reward taking risks to capital and then largely isolate the "risk"-taker from the consequences of failure when they materialize.

100%

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#613

The hacker has spent the last 11 hours slowky and incrementally converting all the various tokens they got to ETH. They've been using a variety of different defi exchange and have eaten large slippage fees, at least once over 5M lost in slippage. We're not seeing any else, e.g. laundering through another exchange, splitting into different accounts, automating the liquidation of tokens to ETH, off loading ETH into a c…

How can USDC or USDT be frozen?

The smart contacts have a blacklist that the companies can add to, that would disable transfers.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#614

The hacker has spent the last 11 hours slowky and incrementally converting all the various tokens they got to ETH. They've been using a variety of different defi exchange and have eaten large slippage fees, at least once over 5M lost in slippage. We're not seeing any else, e.g. laundering through another exchange, splitting into different accounts, automating the liquidation of tokens to ETH, off loading ETH into a c…

How can USDC or USDT be frozen?

Both are centrally managed and are semi-regularly frozen at the request of authorities.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest explanation I have (occam’s razor) is a tie between 1.a and 1.b I’ve also heard rumors that inside bad actors pushed out a forced FTX app update to gain access to accounts. So the advisory is to uninstall FTX and not go anywhere near that website. Any money one has is unfortunately gone, wait for the bankruptcy proceedings to recoup it, if at all.

> I’ve also heard rumors that inside bad actors pushed out a forced FTX app update to gain access to accounts. If it's an inside job with this capability you'd likely already have such access? Only way is that somebody has access to push this, doesn't have access to the keys, and rewrites the app to send them assets or something. But the mass withdrawals imply the keys are compromised, and pushing the app would very…

Do you think it’s at all likely they were able to exfiltrate the keys or escalate privileges by pushing the malicious update? It’s not an iOS or android update from my understanding, just an update to the backend/content server.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#616

The hacker has spent the last 11 hours slowky and incrementally converting all the various tokens they got to ETH. They've been using a variety of different defi exchange and have eaten large slippage fees, at least once over 5M lost in slippage. We're not seeing any else, e.g. laundering through another exchange, splitting into different accounts, automating the liquidation of tokens to ETH, off loading ETH into a c…

How can USDC or USDT be frozen?

The smart contract has an array of frozen addresses that will not be permitted to move funds, which can be edited by Centre and Tether respectively.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one expects a multi-billion dollar exchange to vaporize over night. Except for everyone who has? We don't expect banks to vaporize because they're FDIC-insured with extreme regulations on their lending/investing, highly regulated. But crypto exchanges are the wild west. Totally vulnerable to both hacking and ponzi scheme fraud. Essentially zero regulation or customer insurance. And "vaporizing over night" is how…

I should have said most people, not no one. The reality is most people outside of the HN bubble trust billion dollar companies. Crypto or otherwise. And when I say trust, I don’t mean in the sense that they think the company is doing any moral good, but that they expect a product or service in return for payment. You don’t question that the gas you purchase at a gas station is in fact gas, and not water. Why would a…

But it's not a big deal if you show up to the gas station and they're out of gas. We trust these huge companies, but if your local McDonald's is closed today you're not losing your savings.

Entrusting a company with your savings is an entirely different matter. The only reason people trust banks is because of government regulation and insurance. And sensible people are well aware of FDIC insurance, and of how losing all your money was not an uncommon thing back in the days when there were runs on banks. Sensible people are also aware of Enron and Lehman Bros and Bernie Madoff. These aren't obscure references -- they're household names.

So no, I disagree completely -- sensible people absolutely do not hold large quantities of money on unregulated, uninsured crypto exchanges. Entrusting your savings to an unregulated, uninsured company only 3 years old is a level of risk eons beyond trusting a gas station to fill up your car.

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#618

The hacker has spent the last 11 hours slowky and incrementally converting all the various tokens they got to ETH. They've been using a variety of different defi exchange and have eaten large slippage fees, at least once over 5M lost in slippage. We're not seeing any else, e.g. laundering through another exchange, splitting into different accounts, automating the liquidation of tokens to ETH, off loading ETH into a c…

Why would the attacker move the funds to any remotely censorable coin like DAI?

Re: FTX faces potential hack, sees mysterious outflows totaling more than $600M

#620

FTX is just an exchange right? Any sensible person only puts funds into an exchange that they want to trade. Not your keys, not your crypto.

“Not your keys, not your crypto” is one of the most out of touch axioms in the crypto space (and that’s really saying something). See: the vast majority of the population (even within crypto) that can’t figure out how to setup a wallet in the first place. Then, if you get that far, you can join the hordes of people that lose access to it, dig through garbage dumps for a laptop, have malware that inspects the clipboar…

smart contract wallets allow users to recover funds in the event they lose their private key - https://www.argent.xyz/learn/what-is-a-smart-contract-wallet...
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