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153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

etherscan.io

361–370 of 754 posts

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#361
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not just proof of "design", but proof of the implementation. Absolutely, few people really get this. Even those that do get it generally don't know what it looks like in practice because it's so rare. In case you're curious about what it looks like in practice (at least one way), we presented direct user code compilation and verification[1] in Jan for our smart contract language Pact[2]. The idea that you can write…

> The idea that you can write a doc test that triggers a formal verification about some aspect of your code is, for lack of a better term, strange and yet the power to weight ratio is just off the charts. I'm not sure I understand this sentence. Are you doing doctests, or are your doctests statements of formal properties, or have you abandoned that and are now doing formal specs->code type things?

It's closest to the middle, assuming that you meant that you're stating the properties that you want to test. It does more than that, but at its base that's effectively how it works so it's close enough for a solid intuition. We're working on a paper about it now -- or at least a sub-paper in the clutch of papers that pertain to a public chain version -- that I'll link to when it's out (a couple weeks probably).

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#362
post #25

Here's the root error I believe: https://github.com/paritytech/parity/blob/master/js/src/cont... The initWallet function should have been marked internal, but was instead not marked. Unmarked functions default to public in Solidity, so anyone can call that function and reinitialize the wallet to be under their control

Please be aware that you can press Y before sharing a link to make it a permalink. The link you shared points to master branch, which will change over time, so the line number you pointed to will have something else. Based on the time of your post, I suspect you meant to link to: https://github.com/paritytech/parity/blob/4c32177ef3f4521c66...

You just saved me hours of life time

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the insane decision to use a Turing-complete language, the contract's behavior undecidable. OTOH, if the language isn't Turing-complete, there will almost certainly be things you'll want a contract to do that it can't. You can have generality or decidability, but not both.

Right. It will take time, but eventually Solidity (or some other alternative smart contracts approach) will likely be very trustworthy and secure.

I'm sorry but we have 6 decades of fundamental security research that has shown that it is essentially impossible to have a sufficiently complex, secure system.

The idea that we will ever stop needing human arbiters is laughable and pure hubris.

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think Solidity being designed to turn bad node.js coders into bad smart contract coders was key to Ethereum's success. I've written a book on this (hit upload five minutes ago! release Monday!) which hammers on this point (and all the stuff surrounding this issue). I think Solidity is actually designed with worse is better in mind, because Ethereum is the first smart contract platform that anyone actually…

You've wet my appetite. Got a link to your book?

Pedantry: you mean whet, not wet. To "whet" means to excite, stimulate.

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#365

Let's play hypotheticals. If you were the attacker and you now have the ETH in your wallet, how do you cash out without anyone identifying you and maximising your profits? Also has the attacker broken a law by exploiting a bug in the contract?

I suspect that when you steal this amount of money, the law is the least of your worries. There are likely people who will hunt these hackers to the ends of the earth for what they've done. For their sake, they better cover their tracks well.

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#366
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn't move the money to their rightful owner but to the previous owner.

I don't think that's correct. If you only revert the stolen money transactions and all the branches of them since, almost nobody loses. The few stolen ETH that got sold will be a loss, but it's nothing compared to $35M.

And you'll revert them to what? the buggy contract?

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#367
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, how do you reassign the funds after the hardfork? The funds are attached to addresses and not persons.

Start at block n-1, disable the buggy contract, leave the "stolen" funds where they were.

They were in the contract (or the contract addresses).

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#368
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are mixers where you can get close to not being traced and then can move through monero and then to bitcoin.

Monero is the ONLY cryptocurrency where full privacy is enforced by default. No mixers, no opt-in mode, no super-nodes, no tumblers, it's all obfuscated by default. I'm very bullish on Monero long-term.

The only? There is Zec. And then there is the possibility of forking monero into your own cryptocurrency name.

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#369
post #329
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same group that rescued funds during The DAO attack so they have a good history of benevolent hacking. They are just going to deploy new multi-sig contracts with a fix and make the original owners the owners of the new contracts. Pretty easy to do. They are actually paying for the gas to do the fix using donations they received for their work on The DAO attack so the original wallet owners aren't even out th…

Please ELI5. I thought contracts were fixed but they're going to deploy a "new" contract reverting back the owners? Contracts can change at any time?

The exploit allowed anyone to reinitialize a multisig contract with themselves as an owner because the constructor was a public function. These contracts weren't "fixed" like they were supposed to be.

The white hats will deploy a new contract without the faulty constructor with the old owners reinstated. These newly deployed contracts will have all the same information the old ones did but won't be exploitable.

Re: 153k Ether Stolen in Parity Multi-Sig Attack

#370
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said here last week "Also the lead developer is some kid who believes very much in moving fast and breaking things. This philosophy may work for a social network site but not for other people's money." This philosophy permeates the community of Etherum development. Bitcoin disabled most of the smart contracts op codes for a very good reason. I wouldn't recommend putting anything of value into an Etherum smart co…

People write this stuff off so fast. Here we have a parity developer, probably one of the most competent in the Ethereum ecosystem, and he screwed up to the tune of losing $30m of other people's money. If HE can't get it right, what business do you have running around saying that anyone who can make a webpage can make a decentralized application? We are playing with money. Dealing with attackers is not as simple as r…

He may be brilliant, but he played fast and loose without real testing or concern, so I wouldn't call him the "most competent". For a wallet contract they knew would secure many millions of dollars, there should have been dozens of people auditing it before rolling out to users.
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