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A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

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Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite...

That article covers what happens before the apocalypse. What happens after it, i.e. after the point where AI and robots can not only do our current jobs better than we can, but also all of the ones we could possibly retrain to?

Unless AI and robots become effectively humans, they will not be able to do our jobs better than we can. And they do become effectively humans, we will have much bigger things to worry about than unemployment.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#422
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Whig history of an ever progressing political system is not accurate in my opinion. I've written this comment before, and I'll repeat it as it's relevant to your comment: Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. According to political scientists, the average voter has an extremely limited understanding of what their government is doing. The t…

I know it's popular in America to be cynical about politics, but maybe it is worth realizing other countries have their shit together and maybe just maybe it is the American cynicism that is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

No, I'm cynical about all developed countries. Almost none of them have shit together. The cost disease affects the entire developed world, and I suggest it's due to the government playing an increasingly dysfunctional role in society.

Do you think mass-surveillance is a uniquely American phenomenon?

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#423
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot when the people that run ethereum made the default vote choice as the hard fork. This is important.

I guess to be fair they should've had those clients go 50/50?

Yes. People who don't explicitly vote should either be zero or add 1 to each side

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#424
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's popular in America to be cynical about politics, but maybe it is worth realizing other countries have their shit together and maybe just maybe it is the American cynicism that is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

No, I'm cynical about all developed countries. Almost none of them have shit together. The cost disease affects the entire developed world, and I suggest it's due to the government playing an increasingly dysfunctional role in society. Do you think mass-surveillance is a uniquely American phenomenon?

In the OECD? Yes.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#425
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's popular in America to be cynical about politics, but maybe it is worth realizing other countries have their shit together and maybe just maybe it is the American cynicism that is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

No, I'm cynical about all developed countries. Almost none of them have shit together. The cost disease affects the entire developed world, and I suggest it's due to the government playing an increasingly dysfunctional role in society. Do you think mass-surveillance is a uniquely American phenomenon?

[deleted]

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The code will inevitably need to use a source of true randomness, which will be external to your source code, by definition it can't be a deterministic formula, it needs to use external input from physical devices.

And? You've just moved the problem, you haven't solved it. How do you guarantee that your source is what you think it is? If you can't trust anything outside your source code, then you can't trust anything outside your source code. If you can't trust, say, a url or an IP address. Then you can't trust those things to host a source of randomness either. Security is only as strong as the weakest link, if you try to obfu…

I'm not moving the problem, I'm stating that the problem (as it seems you're stating it) is unsolvable, you simply cannot have a closed crypto system where looking at the source is sufficient to ensure that it's secure.

You need an external source of entropy to generate the key material required for any cryptography. It can't be in your code because any code is fundamentally incapable of doing that. If your source of entropy is compromised, then none of cryptographic systems are safe, not symmetric, not asymmetric, not one-time pads, not anything else.

Yes, you can't trust an url or an IP address - but you should be able to trust your hardware, and that commonly offers some decent sources of entropy. You can also trust yourself - e.g. user-action derived entropy. If you don't trust your hardware, tough luck, get trusted hardware. If your key material isn't generated properly, then your crypto will not be secure.

It doesn't mean that the method is flawed or insecure. All methods are the same in this regard, it simply means that security requires not only secure code, but also other precautions - e.g. secure generation of keys, secure management/storage of keys, secure platform on which to run your code, etc, etc. If you have a secure algorithm, proper implementation, best practices everywhere else, then your system will still be insecure if you fail e.g. to store your keys securely and someone gets them.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in case lordnacho's meaning here isn't clear to anyone. testing a bit with short keys. He's put some bitcoin into wallets with keys/passwords that don't meet very high security standards. I've already lost a tiny amount of BTC He's then lost that bitcoin because there are programs running running around the clock to programatically empty any wallets with passwords that don't meet very high standards of security.…

A more accurate analogy would be that your money vanished from a public locker with combination 0-0-0. Nobody complains about the shortage of address space provided by 256 bits. This guy was experimenting, and being lazy during his experiments, so at the very least he should have known what to expect after the first loss.

[deleted]

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in case lordnacho's meaning here isn't clear to anyone. testing a bit with short keys. He's put some bitcoin into wallets with keys/passwords that don't meet very high security standards. I've already lost a tiny amount of BTC He's then lost that bitcoin because there are programs running running around the clock to programatically empty any wallets with passwords that don't meet very high standards of security.…

A more accurate analogy would be that your money vanished from a public locker with combination 0-0-0. Nobody complains about the shortage of address space provided by 256 bits. This guy was experimenting, and being lazy during his experiments, so at the very least he should have known what to expect after the first loss.

> A more accurate analogy would be that your money vanished from a public locker with combination 0-0-0.

And it's a pleasant world where every time you do that, you get robbed.

> Nobody complains about the shortage of address space provided by 256 bits. This guy was experimenting, and being lazy during his experiments, so at the very least he should have known what to expect after the first loss.

This is totally beside the point.

There's a social cost to constantly having to watch what you do. If you're robbed any time you're on the street, you'll have to spend time learning self defence and you'll have to buy appropriate tools such as locks. You'll also have to teach your friends about this, and you'll need friends. And your attitude to strangers will change.

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#429
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reasoning is flawed. Once a contract is developed that proves to be secure, it can be used over and over at no additional cost.

Once code is developed that proves to be bug free, it can be used over and over with no bugs! Doesn't seem to quite work like that in real life.

Are you saying there is no bug free code?

Re: A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now people who are self taught excellent programmers are unemployable without paying a 60,000 tax into the hands of private institutions but morons who graduated from diploma mills in countries with lax educational standards are entirely safe. I'm also sure that nobody will act to artificially limit the supply of legally employable programmers just to enrich the few at the expense of the rest of us. I'm also sure…

I don't think anyone is arguing that all computer programmers need to be accredited. The argument being put forward is that if you are deploying software in certain specific fields then your code should be signed off by a certified professional before it is allowed to be perform it's intended function (which in this case is handling financial transactions). I am an engineer. There are codified regulations that I am r…

There is a good likelihood that any substantial software effort by an accredited individual touches on a multitude of software written by less accredited people most of which he has never reviewed some of which nobody even knows who wrote it.

The discretion you desire ought to be enforced by the people who are responsible for that 31 million dollars not a set of standards imposed from on high.

If they fail and lose other peoples money or even lives the court is in the best position to correct this on a case by case basis.

Any set of standards imposed from on high are likely to evolve slowly and work poorly as it is difficult to fully specify the problem without in each case fully using understanding the code, the problem space, and the risks.

Ex a standard codified a few years ago would probably specify safe ways to write c but forbid rust.

We can fully specify safe and proper ways to build bridges because we have been building bridges for thousands of years while software development is less understood and still in Flux.

I don't think we could effectively turn software development into engineering even if this was desirable.

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