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

51–60 of 194 posts

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#51

Post by __s »

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...

> who the hell keeps a single source-code file that big

Me. SQLlite. .NET's garbage collector. CPython's eval. Lua's lexer. xinit. dwm. These are off the top of my head that I've seen

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dotnet/coreclr/master/src/...

https://github.com/catseye/Befunge-93/blob/master/src/bef.c

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/master/src/liballoc/v...

https://github.com/oxyc/luaparse/blob/master/luaparse.js

Yep. Pretty troll comment. Felt like taking the bite today. I'm going to get back to getting my lexer past 1000 lines today: https://github.com/serprex/luwa/blob/master/rt/lex.wawa

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#52

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

portent wrote: post #27
yorwba wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would assume all allied countries have similar laws and therefore share extradition treaties.

Even countries that don't have shared extradition treaties don't always ignore criminals within their borders, even if the criminal activity is occurring outside.

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#54

Post by NicolaiS »

kefka wrote: post #34
kator wrote: post #31

> Another decision he made when he had no idea of the bug shows how quirky and unforgiving code can be. “If the capital ‘T’ in line 666 had been a small ‘t,’ that would also have prevented the hack,” he says. Can someone familiar with this explain how something financially based can have a capitalization flaw? I would expect a smart contract language to have very strict type and variable linking. Humans make many mis…

That's primarily because Ethereum is pure amateur hour. When Bitcoin had built in checksums on addresses, Eth Dev's just said "watch where you send money". They ended up having to later add in a capitalization scheme to serve as a hash. I have no clue how they managed to fool so many people with poor and shoddy work. But they have so far. And they've fooled everyone that this is a 'hack' even after saying time and ag…

The 't' vs 'T' has _nothing_ to do with checksums.

`Transfer` and `transfer` are two different functions, one creating an "event" (think a signal on the blockchain) and the other actually transfering tokens.

The true flaw lies in the reentrant attack on `.send()`

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#55

Post by kator »

pjc50 wrote: post #38
kator wrote: post #31

> Another decision he made when he had no idea of the bug shows how quirky and unforgiving code can be. “If the capital ‘T’ in line 666 had been a small ‘t,’ that would also have prevented the hack,” he says. Can someone familiar with this explain how something financially based can have a capitalization flaw? I would expect a smart contract language to have very strict type and variable linking. Humans make many mis…

Actually, could someone post a link to the source so we can all see?

See https://github.com/slockit/DAO/blob/v1.0/DAO.sol#L666

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#56

Post by vuyani »

7ewis wrote: post #53

So I'm assuming the fork, Ethereum isn't at risk? At least as far as we're aware.

It still and will always be. They have set a dangerous precedence. If another group of large developers decide to revert a certain transaction. They could. The one platform that still has its integrity is ethereum classic

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#57

Post by Jabanga »

AJRF wrote: post #50
Jabanga wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the token sales I've seen are ponzi schemes. "Ponzi scheme" seems to be the buzzword used to describe any irrational or bubbly investment. It's incorrect usage of the term.

You are categorically wrong about this. Ponzi schemes are financial frauds where, under the promise of high profits, users put their money, recovering their investment and interests only if enough users after them continue to invest money. Further to this, its qualatively provable, as you can look at the contracts and actually class the type of Ponzi scheme they are. * https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/01/2189634/i…

You're quoting from the Birch-Kaminska circle, which has been bashing cryptocurrency since 2012.

A ponzi scheme is where people pay a fee to join a scheme where members are guaranteed a payment that comes out of the membership fees paid by members that join after them.

No token sale has given out payments, let alone guaranteed one. A speculative price gain is not a "ponzi scheme".

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#58

Post by rtpg »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #46

If R2-D2 used Ethereum. C-3PO: He made a perfectly legal move. Han: Let him have it. It’s not wise to upset a Wookiee (The Ethereum founders). C-3PO: But sir. Nobody worries about upsetting a droid (a regular contract user without influence). Han: That’s cause a droid (regular contract user) don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets (hard fork the entire crypto currency and call you a thief) when they lose. Wooki…

isn't it a bit disingenuous to say it was just the position of Ethereum founders? People wanted their money back.

It's almost as if some recourse for actions done in bad faith is a useful tool to have as a society...

Re: Attempt to Reverse a $55 Million Ether Heist

#60

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

rtpg wrote: post #58
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #46

If R2-D2 used Ethereum. C-3PO: He made a perfectly legal move. Han: Let him have it. It’s not wise to upset a Wookiee (The Ethereum founders). C-3PO: But sir. Nobody worries about upsetting a droid (a regular contract user without influence). Han: That’s cause a droid (regular contract user) don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets (hard fork the entire crypto currency and call you a thief) when they lose. Wooki…

isn't it a bit disingenuous to say it was just the position of Ethereum founders? People wanted their money back. It's almost as if some recourse for actions done in bad faith is a useful tool to have as a society...

Of course, people also want to take back losing moves in chess. The whole point of Ethereum was that the code alone specified the contract.
Post reply on HN