Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen • Hacker News Board

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#161

Post by DerpDerpDerp » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:20 PM UTC

orblivion wrote: post #122

aegiso wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely possible to be in support of a free and peaceful drug trade, while at the same time being morally against theft. I don't know why you're lumping the two.

Because most people feel an ethical obligation to follow the law. (And I'm not saying this as a member of this group). So if you find a person who does not feel compelled to follow the law, they could be an ethical anarchist, or altogether unethical. Purely given how fringe anarchism still is, I don't think it's too unreasonable to guess that the person is in the second category.

I think that's exactly wrong, given the number of people who don't feel compelled to say, follow the rules about when to cross the road, but don't commit theft or murder.

It shows that large classes of people are willing to follow rules that they think are ethical, while ignoring others they regard as immoral or amoral.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#162

Post by kyro » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:21 PM UTC

zedshaw wrote: post #133

This is seriously the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time. Here we have a group of objectivist libertarians who believe that there should be effectively no laws other than the law of economics and self-interest who run an illegal website devoted to the pure greed of cashing in on contraband, and this is what they write: "I’ve included transaction logs at the bottom of this message. Review the vendor’s dis…

I notice this quite a bit amongst my libertarian acquaintances. They tend to believe in a world built on complete freedom to exercise self-interest provided their self-interests are to be held up no matter the cost or damage to others and society. Once they get burned or outwitted by others serving their own interests, they cry injustice in the world as if it never existed before.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#163

Post by sillysaurus2 » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:21 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #147

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If SR was re-issuing coins automatically, it's because they were being intentionally stupid. MtGox was re-issuing coins automatically. Due to this, Gox has lost money. Possibly a huge amount. Were they being intentionally stupid, or just stupid? Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7222690 This transaction malleability flaw is certainly a convenient excuse. But if these people implemented their wallet softwar…

>MtGox was re-issuing coins automatically They worded that very strangely in their statement about it: >This means that an individual could request bitcoins from an exchange or wallet service, alter the resulting transaction's hash before inclusion in the blockchain, then contact the issuing service while claiming the transaction did not proceed. If the alteration fails, the user can simply send the bitcoins back and…

The reference client certainly doesn't do this on spends. Why would gox have implemented it in this way? It doesn't make any sense at all.

I've been researching the details of this disaster. Here's what I've gathered. This info came from Greg Maxwell, a bitcoin core developer. He got his information from the owner of MtGox himself:

Gox implemented custom wallet software to deal with massive transaction volume. The reference client wouldn't cut it for their purposes. For what it's worth, Greg agrees with the decision to write custom software for high-volume exchanges. It seems pretty likely that other exchanges have also implemented custom bitcoin software stacks.

In the scenario where Gox detected that a transaction failed, they automatically reissued the transaction. But that was based on the faulty assumption that the transaction hash couldn't ever mutate. This flaw was exploited to siphon bitcoin out of Gox.

This doesn't matter very much for Gox because, conservatively, they've made at least 120k BTC in profits from trade fees. More likely in the range of 400k. So they'll be able to cover the losses.

But this means it's entirely possible that other exchanges and web services with custom software stacks were hit hard by the malleability event, just like Gox was. It depends whether they were automatically reissuing transactions. If so, then they probably lost money.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#164

Post by DerpDerpDerp » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:21 PM UTC

mbillie1 wrote: post #91

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the law has very little to do with supporting freedom and peace these days.

That is very true, but there's still an enormous chasm for your average person between being mostly-law-abiding (I'm not counting things like jaywalking or going 5mph over the limit) and participating in drug sales, which could land you life in prison. Hell, I think drug laws are incredibly unjust in the US, and that the government is overstepping its bounds left and right. By no means should you infer from this that…

Having dealt passingly with a large number of marijuana dealers, I disagree strongly with your assessment.

Do you have any statistics to back this up, or just the naive reasoning "Well, it's a /serious/ crime, so they'd probably commit others, because only bad people commit /serious/ crimes"?

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#165

Post by tolmasky » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:22 PM UTC

zedshaw wrote: post #133

This is seriously the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time. Here we have a group of objectivist libertarians who believe that there should be effectively no laws other than the law of economics and self-interest who run an illegal website devoted to the pure greed of cashing in on contraband, and this is what they write: "I’ve included transaction logs at the bottom of this message. Review the vendor’s dis…

I think you have a deep misunderstanding of libertarianism (which is your right of course). Libertarians don't necessarily not believe in laws, they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers. This is kind of the whole point. Its clear that in your world view "justice" is somehow inexorably tied to government, but there others that disagree (which leads to your confusion in thinking that because someone asks for justice he is necessarily asking for government).

To illustrate this a bit better, perhaps using an example that you probably agree with Libertarians on: just because libertarians believe drugs should not be illegal, does not necessarily mean they believe drug use shouldn't be discouraged or treated. It is not hypocritical to fight for drug decriminalization but then seek rehabilitation programs for your drug addicted friends. That is in no way acquiescing to the need for drug control -- it is using a different tactic to fight a problem both sides may very well agree exists.

Similarly, it is not hypocritical to want the government to stay out of currencies, but still want a method of punishing thieves. You may believe other methods don't work (just like there are a lot of red voters who think its naive to think not putting drug users in jails works), but that doesn't make the other position inconsistent.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#166

Post by comicjk » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:22 PM UTC

dreamdu5t wrote: post #119

swalsh wrote: post #76

My favorite part of bitcoin is just how wild west it always feels. Real money, in very massive quantities is stolen, and there's no authorities who will do anything about it. Old school scams are new again. Crashes happen on a monthly basis. I'm staying out of it in any serious quantities because frankly i'm having too much fun watching it.

You can do something about it, you just can't offload those costs onto other people you've never met. Anyone is free to attempt to investigate and go after this guy.

Yeah, just like anyone is free to keep their sheep off the commons. It's still going to get grazed flat.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#167

Post by memracom » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:23 PM UTC

index.php?

Can we say that they were inviting themselves to be hacked? Really, the only way to not have all their cash stolen would be for the NSA to hack them first and close up all the security holes.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#168

Post by mathattack » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:23 PM UTC

aegiso wrote: post #63

jfasi wrote: post #3

Given illegal nature of Silk Road 2, I can't help but be suspicious of this explanation of the hack. If someone's sufficiently willing to flaunt laws as to operate a site devoted to selling contraband, what stops them from taking advantage of their position of power and stealing from their users?

It's entirely possible to be in support of a free and peaceful drug trade, while at the same time being morally against theft. I don't know why you're lumping the two.

It doesn't like a moral argument that's being made, rather a probability. Yes someone can be motivated by libertarian values and enable crime. But what's the likelihood that it's a crook looking for a way to steal?

I don't have a great opinion on this argument, just clarifying it.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#169

Post by robzyb » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:23 PM UTC

dispense wrote: post #120

samstave wrote: post #88

SO, I am completely ignorant on exactly how bitcoin works; but how the hell is it not possible to secure a bitcoin one owns.

It is perfectly possible. Your only task is to secure the private keys. These are short enough to be printed as a QR code or written down. keep that piece of paper somewhere safe. Alternatively, it is possible to use a good, random, long passphrase as your de facto private key. That way, the keys to your wallet are literally stored in your mind and nowhere else. As of now, there are no known fatal flaws or weaknesses…

> It is perfectly possible [to secure a bitcoin one owns].

You're forgetting about social engineering.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#170

Post by zedshaw » Thu, Feb 13, 2014, 10:24 PM UTC

xenophanes wrote: post #152

zedshaw wrote: post #133

This is seriously the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time. Here we have a group of objectivist libertarians who believe that there should be effectively no laws other than the law of economics and self-interest who run an illegal website devoted to the pure greed of cashing in on contraband, and this is what they write: "I’ve included transaction logs at the bottom of this message. Review the vendor’s dis…

> objectivist libertarians There is no such thing as an objectivist libertarian. Maybe you should learn what you're talking about before hating. Objectivism and libertarianism are separate opposing things. The Objectivist position on libertarians is very negative.

Links or it didn't happen! I mean hell, if every guy weirdly named Paul or Ron or Rand seems to have read Atlas Shrugged and calls him self a Libertarian, then I gotta go with combining the two.