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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

#51

Post by beau_g »

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…

It must have been an existing boolean flag he set to true, allowSecret65BillionDollarBackdoor

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

#52

Post by tylersmith »

latchkey wrote: post #30
jlawson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The premise is he's accessing other users accounts. "If the account being accessed belongs to the logged in user, or the logged in user is sbf."

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

#53

Post by dahfizz »

Centigonal wrote: post #24
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?

It feels more likely that he just chose $65B rather than an exchange using unsigned 16 bit integers to do accounting.

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

#54

Post by contingencies »

bearjaws wrote: post #9

Reminds me back at a certain large travel website I worked at, someone left the debug promo codes enabled in prod... Eventually someone found the "5000off" code, and posted it to Slickdeals. We had alarms for bookings that lost us money (especially with bundled flights), so it was found relatively quickly, but around 30 people had used it already... Except SBF was just massive fraud, not a whoopsie doopsie.

For codebases with deployment modes, best practice may be to have a test process defined in your CI/CD to run when you spin-up prod that verifies all non-prod features are fully disabled.

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

#57

Post by Animats »

LatteLazy wrote: post #14

Fiddling your own accounting system is not really a "back door". It's just lying. So far that sums up this whole fraud: it's just bare faced stealing, there is no complexity or master plan...

Yes. It's surprising how dumb this whole scam was. Had nothing to do with cryptocurrency technology. It was straight theft of customer assets. Then they lost the money they stole. Probably because they were trying to double-down and win back previous trading losses.

Most crypto scams are better run than this. They get people to buy some crap asset, take a slice of the profits, the asset tanks, and the promoters keep their cut. Axie Infinity and Yuga Labs come to mind.

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

#58

Post by upon_drumhead »

Eduard wrote: post #50
bearjaws wrote: post #9

Reminds me back at a certain large travel website I worked at, someone left the debug promo codes enabled in prod... Eventually someone found the "5000off" code, and posted it to Slickdeals. We had alarms for bookings that lost us money (especially with bundled flights), so it was found relatively quickly, but around 30 people had used it already... Except SBF was just massive fraud, not a whoopsie doopsie.

What would the "5000off" promo code do? Provide a discount by 5000 gazillion percent?

I would presume $5,000.00 off

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

#59

Post by scosman »

Eduard wrote: post #50
bearjaws wrote: post #9

Reminds me back at a certain large travel website I worked at, someone left the debug promo codes enabled in prod... Eventually someone found the "5000off" code, and posted it to Slickdeals. We had alarms for bookings that lost us money (especially with bundled flights), so it was found relatively quickly, but around 30 people had used it already... Except SBF was just massive fraud, not a whoopsie doopsie.

What would the "5000off" promo code do? Provide a discount by 5000 gazillion percent?

I'd assume $5000?

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

#60

Post by voganmother42 »

korroziya wrote: post #35

I don't see it mentioned in the article but is SBF still doing the "dumb blonde" act as though this were all an unintended accident or have his lawyers gotten him to tighten his lip?

“Dumb blonde” is not useful and such a silly stretch…I don’t think this was a good choice for a description of his actions and weakens the potential impact of your comment considerably.
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