Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 194 posts

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#21

Post by darawk »

DINKDINK wrote: post #8
wwwv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principle of Ethereum is that code is law, the "hacker" followed the law to the letter and acted in a prescribed manner. What's the crime here exactly?

The ethereum foundations reaction to the DAO hack proved that the "code is the contract" is not true. Which questions the very value of smart contracts on the ethereum blockchain because it's proven that they're immutable now This is a good discussion: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchai...

> The ethereum foundations reaction to the DAO hack proved that the "code is the contract" is not true.

I disagree. The code must also refer to the implementation of the Ethereum clients, and the collective will of the network participants. Those are implicit provisions of the contract, specified in advance. The Ethereum Classic chain still exists, and the thief is welcome to use it. People have simply voted with their feet and prefer a world without the theft. There is no breach of contract, anyone is free to fork the Ethereum network in any way, at any time. It is up to the users to decide how much value to ascribe each fork.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#22

Post by dyscrete »

SolarNet wrote: post #9

Part of the problem is they based this language off of JavaScript on purpose no less. It should be hard to make mistakes like this yet a single capitalization would change the semantic meaning enough to prevent this! Terrible design choices for a financial banking language.

SolarNet what makes you think it's based on js

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#23

Post by devdoomari »

> ". Over email, he said, “We might be up the creek ;).” Later, when Gün pointed to the error in line 666, Daian replied, “Don’t think so.”

well, isn't the financial law against this kind of incompetence in the first place?

I don't think the thieves would be guiltier than the team behind DAO.

ps: and line 666??? who the hell keeps a single source-code file that big? no wonder bugs are around...

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#24

Post by vuyani »

tajen wrote: post #17
wwwv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All obfuscation around a central controlling group that have the ability to reverse any transactions they don't like or negatively financially impact them, in other words.

Said "hacker" could even take Ethereum to a civil court and win a trial for changing the DAO's code: Ethereum long claimed that transactions were unrevokable and only contracts had value, causing tort to the hacker when rules were reversed... Given the number of people involved, it could even be juged as organized crime against one person...

hmm true. Maybe smart contracts also need a good old fashioned terms & conditions signed. At least that protects against unknown bugs and exploits?

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#25

Post by pjc50 »

devdoomari wrote: post #23

> ". Over email, he said, “We might be up the creek ;).” Later, when Gün pointed to the error in line 666, Daian replied, “Don’t think so.” well, isn't the financial law against this kind of incompetence in the first place? I don't think the thieves would be guiltier than the team behind DAO. ps: and line 666??? who the hell keeps a single source-code file that big? no wonder bugs are around...

Blockchain currency advocates like to claim that the law doesn't apply to them.

Line 666 is an entertaining coincidence but that is really not that large a file for most languages.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#26

Post by jhildings »

DINKDINK wrote: post #8
wwwv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principle of Ethereum is that code is law, the "hacker" followed the law to the letter and acted in a prescribed manner. What's the crime here exactly?

The ethereum foundations reaction to the DAO hack proved that the "code is the contract" is not true. Which questions the very value of smart contracts on the ethereum blockchain because it's proven that they're immutable now This is a good discussion: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-17/blockchai...

The reaction releasing a new software? How is this a contradiction to your statement? The old chain still exists

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#27

Post by portent »

yorwba wrote: post #14
wwwv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should be easy to describe then.

IANAL, but here is how I would argue: The DAO was created with the intention to allocate its funds according to a certain voting scheme, with everyone's power determined by the number of tokens they held. But the program did not correctly implement this intention, and the DAO hack exploited the difference to bring the funds under control of the attacker. This most likely violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and…

The "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" applies to the US. What if the hacker lives somewhere else? Then that law does not apply to him, and the action was not illegal.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#28

Post by vuyani »

dyscrete wrote: post #22
SolarNet wrote: post #9

Part of the problem is they based this language off of JavaScript on purpose no less. It should be hard to make mistakes like this yet a single capitalization would change the semantic meaning enough to prevent this! Terrible design choices for a financial banking language.

SolarNet what makes you think it's based on js

Solidity is a contract-oriented, high-level language whose syntax is similar to that of JavaScript and it is designed to target the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#29

Post by MereInterest »

vuyani wrote: post #24
tajen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said "hacker" could even take Ethereum to a civil court and win a trial for changing the DAO's code: Ethereum long claimed that transactions were unrevokable and only contracts had value, causing tort to the hacker when rules were reversed... Given the number of people involved, it could even be juged as organized crime against one person...

hmm true. Maybe smart contracts also need a good old fashioned terms & conditions signed. At least that protects against unknown bugs and exploits?

In that case, they are no longer smart contracts. The entire appeal was that they would be knowable in their entirety, automatically executed, and irrevocable. The goal as I understood it was too have something that would enforce itself, not needing an external authority to interpret it.

Instead, as others have pointed out, the hard fork demonstrated that this was not at all the case. Ethereum contracts can be voided, and the entire premise is therefore flawed. Terms and conditions would just be another way that contracts could be voided, another flaw.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#30

Post by MereInterest »

devdoomari wrote: post #23

> ". Over email, he said, “We might be up the creek ;).” Later, when Gün pointed to the error in line 666, Daian replied, “Don’t think so.” well, isn't the financial law against this kind of incompetence in the first place? I don't think the thieves would be guiltier than the team behind DAO. ps: and line 666??? who the hell keeps a single source-code file that big? no wonder bugs are around...

I've seen single-file Fortran code that exceeds 15k lines of code, and I have no doubt that there exist source files orders of magnitude larger than that. Below 1000 lines, it depends on the style. If those are all a single function, then you're up a creek. If those are neatly split into many independent functions, then it can be pretty manageable.
Post reply on HN