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Bitcoinica MtGox account compromised

bitcointalk.org

51–60 of 108 posts

Re: Bitcoinica MtGox account compromised

#53
post #29
post #25

This is starting to prove -- the hard way -- why regulations, certifications, and all that other stuff that feels like meaningless overhead the majority of the time has become a grudgingly accepted part of our lives. It comes back to the most difficult problem: you inevitably need to trust someone, so how do you minimize your risk in that trust? I always thought the Bitcoin trust issues would revolve around the inabi…

As the big banks in the USA have proven, government regulation is definitively not the answer to the question "How can you know whom to trust?" Seriously. Knock that shit off. It's a red herring. You can't abstract away the personal process of choosing trust anchors and metrics, no matter how hard you try. Changing your trust anchor to "the government" just means you end up getting fucked on a larger scale, over a la…

Saying that government regulation for financial markets is a red herring is like saying that SSL for ecommerce is a red herring. Sure, it's imperfect. It's not a complete solution. It gets circumvented sometimes. It creates a false sense of security sometimes. The people who run it do embarrassingly dumb things sometimes. But there's still a big difference between marketplaces with that protection and marketplaces without it.

Re: Bitcoinica MtGox account compromised

#55
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the big banks in the USA have proven, government regulation is definitively not the answer to the question "How can you know whom to trust?" Seriously. Knock that shit off. It's a red herring. You can't abstract away the personal process of choosing trust anchors and metrics, no matter how hard you try. Changing your trust anchor to "the government" just means you end up getting fucked on a larger scale, over a la…

As the big banks in the USA have proven, government regulation is definitively not the answer to the question "How can you know whom to trust?” A common sentiment: “Big Government doesn’t work.” No, it doesn’t work. But in many cases, it’s less broken then no government a/k/a The Free Market. I’m reminded of Winston Churchill’s quip: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the othe…

>how is it going to scale beyond protecting the few wealthy info-elite that can protect themselves?

This is why I have trouble with Bit Coin. I actually like the idea of Bit Coin, a predictable monetary policy that has many of the advantages of a traditional inflationary economy, but without the ability of a political entity to make short term fixes that screw us over in the long term. But the problem is that we're transferring elite status to a different group of people. In the end, your ability to mine coins, process transactions, protect yourself and transact business using a non-trivial system is an advantage and screw everyone who doesn't get it. If you don't have advanced hardware and cheap electricity, you're disadvantaged. If you don't know how to use a mouse, you're disadvantaged.

I wish I was smart enough to come up with a better solution.

Re: Bitcoinica MtGox account compromised

#57

The app and its infrastructure was created by a single, very inexperienced programmer. The app's original author, Zhou Tong, is only 17[1]. Not that age is an indicator of experience in general, but it's certainly the case here. I'm honestly shocked at the amount of trust placed in Bitcoinica. An interesting display of the oft mentioned Stockholm Syndrome happening elsewhere on the forum here https://bitcointalk.org/…

Well I do agree with you that Bitcoinica was not 100% secure. This hack really has nothing to do with the app or its infrastructure.

- I didn't set the password. - I didn't have the power to change the password. - I shouldn't have access to the account.

The root cause is LastPass account being stolen.

Re: Bitcoinica MtGox account compromised

#58
Putting aside the way the Bitcoinica account got compromised, I wanted to mention that I learned the hard way that either Mt.Gox is rife with security holes or a lot of these breaches are actually insider jobs from someone working at MtGox : A month back I realized that I had around 40 BTC lying around and decided to sell them on MtGox. First, my Mt.Gox is mostly inactive, so I actually had to reset my password and setup a new one that I had never used before. Then, after I sold my coins, I realized I cannot transfer my money to my Dwolla account; MtGox needs a scanned copy of my SSN! While I was deliberating whether I should trust MtGox with my SSN, 24 hours had passed, and I got an automated email from MtGox saying my money had been converted to bitcoins and has been transferred! Everything gone! So, the fact that : 1. My account was mostly inactive. 2. I had recently changed my account password to a new more complex one : 2 upper caps, 5 lower case, 2 numbers and one special character. 3. My money was sitting in my account for only 24 hours. 4. The time between my money getting converted to bitcoins and the actual transfer was just a few seconds, as if an automated script scans all accounts and the performs some tasks on them. So, in short, please don't put all the blame on Bitcoinica. Something's wrong at MtGox too :)

Re: Bitcoinica MtGox account compromised

#59
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the big banks in the USA have proven, government regulation is definitively not the answer to the question "How can you know whom to trust?" Seriously. Knock that shit off. It's a red herring. You can't abstract away the personal process of choosing trust anchors and metrics, no matter how hard you try. Changing your trust anchor to "the government" just means you end up getting fucked on a larger scale, over a la…

As the big banks in the USA have proven, government regulation is definitively not the answer to the question "How can you know whom to trust?” A common sentiment: “Big Government doesn’t work.” No, it doesn’t work. But in many cases, it’s less broken then no government a/k/a The Free Market. I’m reminded of Winston Churchill’s quip: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the othe…

Without any rules, there is no such thing as personal property and therefore a free market cannot exist. You're describing anarchy, where people take what they want by force.

Re: Bitcoinica MtGox account compromised

#60

Putting aside the way the Bitcoinica account got compromised, I wanted to mention that I learned the hard way that either Mt.Gox is rife with security holes or a lot of these breaches are actually insider jobs from someone working at MtGox : A month back I realized that I had around 40 BTC lying around and decided to sell them on MtGox. First, my Mt.Gox is mostly inactive, so I actually had to reset my password and s…

I've recently had upwards of $10K on mtgox and had no problems. Could it be that you have some malware with a keylogger on your computer?
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