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Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

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Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#251

Post by Qub3d »

capableweb wrote: post #104
MPSimmons wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much purchasing power does that afford? If he wanted to buy an island, pay for it to have infrastructure added, and then also hire security and business payroll, could he actually exchange the Eth to the applicable currencies? I know the numbers line up, but is that amount of liquidity in the system?

> could he actually exchange the Eth to the applicable currencies? I know the numbers line up, but is that amount of liquidity in the system? Yes, Coinbase, Binance and other big exchanges offer OTC trading where you can trade pretty large amounts without impacting the market at large.

Counter-point: there is currently another submission on HN suggesting that crypto "off-ramps" are really problematic and difficult at the moment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30322296

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#252

Post by donmcronald »

samarama wrote: post #166
Grim-444 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a thought experiment, replace crypto in this situation for beanie babies. You managed to buy a bunch of beanie babies before a beanie baby craze started, and sold them at exorbitant prices to other people coming in that were convinced that beanie baby prices would only keep skyrocketing. You took their money, and now I guess as long as they're the bag holders still holding beanie babies when it all falls apart and…

Except beanie babies have no inherent value, but ETH has vast inherent value in numerous ways 1. Immutability 2. Decentralization 3. Cheap, fast, secure cross-country money transfers 4. Protection against inflation 5. Independence of banks or arbitrary freezes of your funds 6. Access to a vast variety of financials services 7. Is quite likely the replacement of money The fact that people still don’t get that in 2022…

1. Maybe. It's not so great if you publish something confidential.

2. No one is responsible for anything, you'll never get any support, and one day the decentralized consensus might be to abandon the whole system.

3. It takes 16 seconds for a transaction to post and the average transaction fee [a] is over $2. Cross-country money transfers (assuming you mean international) benefit money launderers and criminals a lot more than me.

4. I never understand this sentiment. Thousands of tokens have been invented to create hundreds of billions of dollars. If the federal reserve told everyone they could print their own fiat and have it accepted at the bank, what do you think would happen? Inflation, right? Think of it another way. If the liquidity for the market is fixed in the sense of the amount of fiat people are willing to bring in, then every token mined or minted is diluting the value of anything you're holding.

5. This is at the risk of losing your keys and your life savings. No thanks. Also, banks act as a backstop for a lot of things people don't even think about. They won't let you wire your life savings to Nigeria without trying to make sure you won't get scammed. The indemnify you from the risk of fraud if you're using a credit card. Money you give them is backed by FDIC (or similar) insurance, so if the bank fails your money is still there.

6. Like?

7. Yeah. I'm sure the super elite that control almost all of the money and assets on the planet are going to sit by and watch as the crypto community anoints themselves as the new rulers of the wealth.

And what happens in this utopia where everything can be anonymous and governments have lost control of the money supply? Does everyone stop paying taxes? Who funds the schools, hospitals, and all other infrastructure? Do you think the rich are going to suddenly become charitable and start funding everything? They already contribute as little as possible, so it's difficult to imagine a world where they'd contribute $1 if they aren't forced to do it?

> The fact that people still don’t get that in 2022 is astonishing.

We don't get it because it doesn't make sense. It might make perfect sense for those of you that mined millions of (on paper) dollars of crypto currency, but it's not a good deal for anyone else. It's objectively worse in terms of stability and predictability and the best outcome for us is to get a different set of wealthy elite that control everything.

a. https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_average_transaction_...

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#253

Post by thebean11 »

Grustaf wrote: post #213
ryan29 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally whoever owns the keys listed as the registrant owns the domain. If you lose your keys you lose your domain. You have no recourse if someone squats on your domain, uses a lookalike domain for phishing, steals your domain, etc.. And for the privilege of having a judgement proof blockchain with no oversight you get to buy your domain from an early adopter that's squatting (investing) and you get to pay fe…

> It's literally whoever owns the keys listed as the registrant owns the domain. Sure, but even so, how is this implemented? Presumably some organisation needs to uphold this connection. Simply "owning" a domain, in the sense that you "own" an NFT, is not very helpful, you need some kind of actual control over it. Presumably a server is needed to forward the domain to your IP, and someone needs to run that server, ri…

There is a smart contract that supports features like domain name resolution and transfers. The data and code needed to resolve the domain to your IP would live on the blockchain, so effectively every node in the network is hosting it. The smart contract could be totally immutable; nobody would have special permissions.

The resolution would work by executing some "lookup" smart contract function on a node (you could run your own local node for lookups, or use a public node similar to hitting your ISP's or Google's DNS server).

None of this is really cutting edge, it has been possible for a long time now.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#254

Post by hypertele-Xii »

thebean11 wrote: post #247
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My domain is secured by the ministry of telecommunications of my local government. To transfer ownership of my domain requires a hard copy of a random code snail-mailed to me by the ministry. It's literally tied to my legal citizenship. That's the opposite of "questionable."

That has some obvious downsides. It probably doesn't matter for you personally but being able to take someone's domain away for political reasons isn't ideal.

Ownership as a concept is backed and secured by law (and enforcement), an inherently political system in democracy. It's the most ideal system successfully practised around the world today.

The next best thing is securing one's property by practicing personal violence, and as I've no interest in shooting anyone for mere robbery, I'll take political ownership any day of the week.

If my very countrymen (and women) collectively decide I can't have my domain, then so be it. The obvious upside is that while they do uphold my ownership, it's as secure as any of my earthly possessions. Stealing my domain amounts to stealing my mail, which is a crime.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#255

Post by etamponi »

Someone else already commented on this, but doesn't _everybody_ just realize that this is way too complicated and error prone? Signigning a token (whatever that means, I never saw so much nonsensical jargon in my life) gives a random person possible access over _all_ of your money??!! And this _by design_ can't be audited by a central authority that guarantees against scams.

If I had to read the source code of all my wire transfers, I'd probably just barter my services for some milk and bread, it definitely seems smarter.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#256

Post by fleddr »

herodotus wrote: post #224

So I don't know anything about crypto, but stories like this make me think that crypto can never become mainstream. I have been programming since 1970; I worked for major computer companies; I was a computer science professor; I have apps on the App Store. In spite of all of this, I have not the foggiest idea, even after reading the thread, how someone who offers to give me something can use the gift to steal from me…

It wasn't just giving something. The NFT was given, but this in itself does nothing. The victim was then asked to stake that NFT. To stake an NFT, the smart contract that does the staking needs access to your wallet. This too is normal. Except that the permission prompt asked for approval on another smart contract by means of a misleading name.

There's nothing broken here. A smart contract is just a piece of code that moves money. You better be sure about what it's doing before you allow it to run. There's blue chip smart contracts that are proven and thoroughly audited, but anything else you need to read the code. Same as reading a contract before you sign it.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#257

Post by sofixa »

bryans wrote: post #208
chrisco255 wrote: post #11

This was a multi-week long social engineering scam targeted at Thomas. Thomas has a Discord for a drone transportation startup, and the scammers proceeded to embed themselves in the community and provide valuable labor such as web design and graphics design in order to earn his trust. Thomas's wallet is public and advertised on Twitter via his ENS domain. He had $100M+ in aETH, a derivative token provided by Aave whe…

> scammers are getting more creative and advanced in technique including standing up professional front end websites to give the appearance of legitimacy It seems like this is becoming the minimum standard for scam operations. For example, there is currently a BTC phishing scam going around that tries to convince the user they've accidentally received an email meant for someone else, which just happens to include a l…

Wow, that's a fairly elaborate scam.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#258

Post by capableweb »

Qub3d wrote: post #251
capableweb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could he actually exchange the Eth to the applicable currencies? I know the numbers line up, but is that amount of liquidity in the system? Yes, Coinbase, Binance and other big exchanges offer OTC trading where you can trade pretty large amounts without impacting the market at large.

Counter-point: there is currently another submission on HN suggesting that crypto "off-ramps" are really problematic and difficult at the moment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30322296

Breaking news: "off-ramps" to centralized currencies is centralized.

It's not difficult if the source of your cryptocurrencies is legitimate, while difficult if you have a hard time explaining how it's legitimate. I think the system works as intended.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#259

Post by skeletonjelly »

FabioFleitas wrote: post #157
Kiro wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billion dollar deals are negotiated on Discord all the time.

That sounds really surprising to me. Have any references to share?

Also interested. Pretty easy thing to say without citation

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#260

Post by [deleted] »

nfw2 wrote: post #117
randomhodler84 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you remove the plutocratic and cryptocurrency components, all you have software, and as you are a developer, you already have everything you need. Don’t fall for the DAO trap, it’s a pit for fools to throw their money into.

I had never heard of DAOs before this and am struggling to wrap my head around it. It seems similar to any other venture with shareholders, except the shareholders need to reach consensus for any sort of financial transaction. Is that right? So the DAO is blocking this guy with $100M sitting around from just hiring an actual designer for his air taxi project?

[deleted]
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