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Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

businessinsider.com

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#21

Post by beaned »

tsimionescu wrote: post #12

Interestingly, while some are quoting a "single line of code", the article is actually using some even stranger information: > "Mr. Wang created this back door by inserting a single number into millions of lines of code [emphasis mine] for the exchange, creating a line of credit from FTX to Alameda, to which customers did not consent," [FTX lawyer Andrew Dietderich] added. "And we know the size of that line of credit…

Maybe some specific accounts were hard-coded to have credit lines of certain amounts, and they just changed the one for Alameda from 0 (or whatever) to 65 billion.

Not uncommon for a startup to hack features into code directly before there's a db column and frontend to support updating values through an admin interface.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#22

Post by awestley »

hodder wrote: post #8

I'm guessing this "single line of code" called a function which was 9000 lines. Regardless this is pretty damning smoking gun information if true. "uh-oh, sphaghettio"s becomes a pretty tough legal defense.

Maybe he saw Office Space one too many times.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#23

Post by jbverschoor »

layer8 wrote: post #10
hodder wrote: post #8

I'm guessing this "single line of code" called a function which was 9000 lines. Regardless this is pretty damning smoking gun information if true. "uh-oh, sphaghettio"s becomes a pretty tough legal defense.

The article says “single number”, not “single line of code”.

It could be a simple boolean check, right?

If superuser? ->

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#24

Post by Centigonal »

tsimionescu wrote: post #12

Interestingly, while some are quoting a "single line of code", the article is actually using some even stranger information: > "Mr. Wang created this back door by inserting a single number into millions of lines of code [emphasis mine] for the exchange, creating a line of credit from FTX to Alameda, to which customers did not consent," [FTX lawyer Andrew Dietderich] added. "And we know the size of that line of credit…

$65B seems oddly specific - could it be that they just set the liquidation limit for Alameda's account to 65,535 (max 16bit unsigned int), in millions of dollars?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#25

Post by ogzk »

layer8 wrote: post #10
hodder wrote: post #8

I'm guessing this "single line of code" called a function which was 9000 lines. Regardless this is pretty damning smoking gun information if true. "uh-oh, sphaghettio"s becomes a pretty tough legal defense.

The article says “single number”, not “single line of code”.

It was obviously 0.0072973525693

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#26

Post by programmarchy »

latchkey wrote: post #17
programmarchy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`if (account["user_id"] === session.user.id || session.user.username === "sbf") {`

If his login username is `sbf`, the second condition would never be hit. Maybe you meant to write `&&`?

Huh? (false || true) === true

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#27

Post by connicpu »

faangiq wrote: post #20
tsimionescu wrote: post #12

Interestingly, while some are quoting a "single line of code", the article is actually using some even stranger information: > "Mr. Wang created this back door by inserting a single number into millions of lines of code [emphasis mine] for the exchange, creating a line of credit from FTX to Alameda, to which customers did not consent," [FTX lawyer Andrew Dietderich] added. "And we know the size of that line of credit…

Absolutely lulzy to think of cranking out millionssss of lines of code in the ~2 years FTX existed.

I feel like it's safe to say the bulk of that was generated, and/or they're including all code imported as vendored dependencies

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#28

Post by jlawson »

latchkey wrote: post #17
programmarchy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`if (account["user_id"] === session.user.id || session.user.username === "sbf") {`

If his login username is `sbf`, the second condition would never be hit. Maybe you meant to write `&&`?

No, the first conditional checks if the logged-in user is allowed to access the account by ensuring that the the user and account match.

OR, if the user is sbf, they always have access regardless of which account it is.

That said this wouldn't really set up a line of credit but it is a way to give one user access to everyone's stuff.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#29

Post by jrockway »

hodder wrote: post #8

I'm guessing this "single line of code" called a function which was 9000 lines. Regardless this is pretty damning smoking gun information if true. "uh-oh, sphaghettio"s becomes a pretty tough legal defense.

> "uh-oh, sphaghettio"s becomes a pretty tough legal defense.

I guess if a jury is involved you don't need a legal defense, you just need to confuse the jury to the point where they can't agree on the facts. "uh-oh spaghettios" has probably worked at least once, especially if computers are involved.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried's secret 'backdoor' discovered, FTX lawyer says

#30

Post by latchkey »

jlawson wrote: post #28
latchkey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If his login username is `sbf`, the second condition would never be hit. Maybe you meant to write `&&`?

No, the first conditional checks if the logged-in user is allowed to access the account by ensuring that the the user and account match. OR, if the user is sbf, they always have access regardless of which account it is. That said this wouldn't really set up a line of credit but it is a way to give one user access to everyone's stuff.

My point is that the first check would be true because the user is already sbf.
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