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Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

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Re: Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

#141

Post by marshray »

wheels wrote: post #79
luser001 wrote: post #6

Hmm, for a customer of a cloud provider, this sort of thing will be very hard to defend against. Maybe if the customer service system had had two-factor security, this might have been avoided (i.e., customer service can access your account only if you read them your hardware token's code). Requiring SSL/SSH client certificates even for intranet accesses might have deterred this attack. I hope other cloud providers ta…

Actually not. Just use a loopback cypto FS to store the sensitive stuff. The reason they had to reboot the machine is that they just had access to the HDD where they could change the password, as opposed to having live root access.

I really doubt that "only HDD access" is a secure position in cases where your cloud provider CSR is pwned.

If that's even the case here. We don't have much indication that the attacker couldn't have taken a snapshot of a running system (or that that will be how it happens next time).

So, sure, use a loopback crypto filesystem. It just doesn't provide much in the way of a security guarantee (but it adds some measurable costs).

Re: Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

#142

Post by ajross »

nfriedly wrote: post #132
ajross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thank the legacy financial system for these unexplainable delays I understand your feelings on this. But the fact remains that the using the "legacy financial system" I can move my money between investments on my etrade account with a latency of minutes. I can buy that car on a credit card or with a personal check with zero latency. Bitcoins aren't remotely there yet. There may be some privacy or social justice reaso…

My understanding of when they move money around in minutes is that they're basically giving you a short-term, interest-free loan in exchange for using their service. In reality, it still takes a day or two for things to clear.

Right. Because it's a robust system with clear properties and sufficient risk tolerance to make that practical. The bitcoin economy lacks those properties, which is my whole point. And people who plus bitcoins as "investments" without awareness of these issues are hurting, not helping.

Re: Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

#143

Post by showerst »

ohgodthecat wrote: post #89
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, there is just no way that this is the case. Please don't throw such a serious allegation out there without any evidence. To even suggest that this is technically possible for an employee to do is a serious allegation, let alone suggesting that someone did it maliciously. This spreads all kinds of FUD. I'll happily eat my words if that turns out to be what happened, but it is definitely not the simplest answer.

> To even suggest that this is technically possible for an employee to do is a serious allegation It is technically possible for an employee to do it because it seems (from the linked pastebin above) that is how it was compromised, an elevated account for linode manage was compromised. As for an employee being the one that did it, that is probably the least likely cause.

I believe he's referring to the part about employees (at least the ones that have access to the customer dashboards) being able to run a script to scan for bitcoins.

Re: Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

#144

Post by spindritf »

RLG_RLG wrote: post #137
dave_sullivan wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly a grey area, but at what point is it safe to assume that if you get hacked, it's not going to be because your ISP got hacked? Say this happened to Amazon and it affected a company like Heroku or dropbox, both users of AWS? Regardless of what terms of service says, I'll bet there's some liability somewhere. And if there's a cut off, maybe linode should advertise that? "Hey, we're cheap, but you get what…

> but at what point is it safe to assume that if you get hacked, it's not going to be because your ISP got hacked If you co-locate your hardware at a data center and your staff competently secures your systems.

Secure with what? A booby trap? There's always a level of trust you need to have for your provider. Even when you get a cage in their DC.

Re: Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

#145

Post by marshray »

RLG_RLG wrote: post #133
lsc wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but will that help you if the attacker trojans whatever it is that is doing the decryption? I mean, I'm very clearly not a crypto expert, but I do believe that this would be quite a lot like what Bruce Schnier calls 'the evil maid' attack. Instead of having a bootloader, you have a minimal Linux install, then you get a key to that minimal linux install, and that minimal linux install uses that key to decrypt you…

I advise you seek the services of a professional sys admin to secure systems.

He's right though.

I don't think I've ever met a professional sysadmin who could defeat the evil maid attack. All the ones I've met would refuse to think about an attack vector if it implied they could not boot their servers.

Re: Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

#146

Post by rsynnott »

larrys wrote: post #99
polemic wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why insurance exists. I wonder if there are any insurance providers who'd be willing to provider coverage for this sort of event.

Insurance won't insure for what they don't understand and build a risk model for. I can assure they won't understand something like this for a very long time.

There are a couple of insurance companies who will give you a quote on literally anything. You may not like their quote, but they'll give you one.

Re: Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

#147

Post by rsynnott »

sgornick wrote: post #9
jaredstenquist wrote: post #4

Since my $1,000 worth of bitcoins dropped in value to $150 over a period of weeks, I've become significantly less interested in using it as a currency.

You mean less interested in using it as a way to profit from speculation. As a currency it is not as critical that the value only goes up. A person or merchant receiving bitcoins can easily convert them out to USDs and still lose less in fees than the same transaction would cost compared to accepting a credit card or debit card payment. For example, BTC -> USD at most exchanges is around half a percent.

> As a currency it is not as critical that the value only goes up.

Not just not critical, highly undesirable.

Re: Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

#148

Post by dale-ssc »

We install a little script that runs at boot up to page us if /.expected-reboot isn't present (or removes it if it is). Then, to reboot systems, we run expected-reboot, which is a tiny script that touches /.expected-reboot before calling shutdown.

Wouldn't have prevented this but would likely have paged this unfortunate soul when his machine rebooted unexpectedly.

Re: Compromised Linode, thousands of BitCoins stolen

#149

Post by mckoss »

RLG_RLG wrote: post #114
lsc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where do you keep the key to the crypto fs?

Written on a scrap of paper in your wallet. only the password and no other info should be on the scrap. If you can memorize it, it is a bad password.

My password was randomly generated, has 85 bits of entropy and, it took me only a couple of days to memorize.
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