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How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

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Re: How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

#61

Post by zaroth »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #14
chirau wrote: post #7

Out of curiosity...is this a man or a woman? EDIT: What's with the oversensitivity here? Is there anything wrong in asking a person's sex? What if it's for studying inclination towards certain decision making criteria? Geez folks, not every question is sinister. If you don't want to answer it, just move on. No one is being attacked here.

> EDIT: What's with the oversensitivity here? It's not oversenstivity, there's literally no reason to care about the sex of the person who wrote this. It's completely offtopic and irrelevant. What does "studying inclination towards certain decision making criteria" mean anyway? Reading between the lines it sounds like you think women behave one way and men the other way (which is fine if you think that btw), but want…

"Literally no reason" in this case meaning...?

If you went through 7 books of "Harri Potter" carefully written to never reveal the gender of the main character, would you care?

It's human nature to be curious. And particularly about a dark shady character pulling of crazy crypto heists.

Ambiguity over the identity of the narrator is part of the hook. Of course it's reflex to start drawing a picture of this character in your mind as you read. When the gender is unknown or not clear, and particularly when you throw in mixed messages that this might not be the stereotypical male basement dweller, it's interesting.

Re: How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

#62

Post by jandrese »

karlkatzke wrote: post #48
outsidetheparty wrote: post #43

The "bad Tinder date" is completely irrelevant to the story, and is dispensed with after the first paragraph -- but it's oddly effective clickbait; I think this technique should be used more often: * Apple releases iPhone X, after a bad Tinder date * Jamie Dimon Slams Bitcoin as a ‘Fraud’ after a bad Tinder date * Turkey Signs Russian Missile Deal, Pivoting From NATO after a bad Tinder date * Structure and Interpreta…

There's a whole subreddit ( r/savedyouaclick/ ) for these.

That subreddit is great. My favorite:

Dave Grohl Says There's "One Thing Missing" From Possible Nirvana Reunion | It's Kurt Cobain.

Re: How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

#63

Post by mcv »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #22
spuz wrote: post #16

I think the key to understanding this article is this: > But Mitch, isn’t this wrong? No. Let's suppose the hacker really did feel no remorse for stealing 153k Ether then it seems they might not feel it necessary to keep their identity hidden. They might also feel proud enough that they feel it is worth the risk to publicly disclose their actions. Given that, it seems that perhaps some of what the author wrote might…

Presumably whoever did it is a clever person. If I were in that position, I think it would be a fairly obvious step to season the article with subtle misdirections that send people on a wild goose chase. In fact it would be quite fun to do. So I wouldn't take the "information" in the article at face value at all.

Chances are that misdirection is exactly why it started with the Tinder date and mentions the Bastille Day.

Re: How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

#64

Post by mcv »

avinassh wrote: post #60
dnh44 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the first paragraph I assumed the author is a woman.

but could be a homosexual person too, right?

Or a straight man or gay woman. The unnecessary identifying information is very likely meant to throw people off.

Re: How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

#66

Post by keerthiko »

C4stor wrote: post #55
prklmn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think being clever with code necessarily equates to having common sense. If he had common sense, he would have went on his merry way without bragging on the internet...

You possibly vastly underestimate how important it is for people commiting "perfect" crimes to tell the world it was them. There's a lot of stories about forgers including subtle clues in their forgeries to be able to claim their "art" and prove they duped people.

This. This is also essentially the premise for (the original) Death Note (except a God complex rather than proving they pulled a fast one).

Re: How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

#67

Post by maddyboo »

outsidetheparty wrote: post #43

The "bad Tinder date" is completely irrelevant to the story, and is dispensed with after the first paragraph -- but it's oddly effective clickbait; I think this technique should be used more often: * Apple releases iPhone X, after a bad Tinder date * Jamie Dimon Slams Bitcoin as a ‘Fraud’ after a bad Tinder date * Turkey Signs Russian Missile Deal, Pivoting From NATO after a bad Tinder date * Structure and Interpreta…

Considering the fact that this was published under a pseudonym (as mentioned by another comment), I wonder if the Tinder details were a bit of misdirection.

This person purportedly stole ~41 million dollars from a number of parties. Who knows who those people were? They could be some bad people, they could owe money to some bad people, or they might be angered enough to become bad people. That's not to mention the fact that law enforcement would likely be interested in this. Or maybe some thugs might like to just beat them up until they squeal?

Assuming the author is truly the thief, I wonder how many of the details intermingled with their story are false.

Imagine you're the thief. You just stole $41MM. Now what?

You know someone is gonna wonder where their money went - likely multiple people. The blockchain is a public ledger. The victims are going to hire people with expertise just like the author claimed to have in order to try following the ETH as it is mixed and laundered. That's a lot of money to launder successfully without making a single mistake. And I'd imagine a lot of people will be watching.

However, the author surely knows all of this. So why write a blog post with so much helpful information? Assuming all of it is true, we could easily deduce:

---

> tinder user, went on a date w/ a creepy guy: author is likely either a straight female, or bi/gay male, single

> bastille day celebrations outside: lives in france

>has two living parents who own a house, has an older brother who does not have a car, has a sister who is going/went to college

>has loans, does not own a house

---

That's a lot of information, and isn't even all of it. Why just hand it out, knowing you're likely a big target on a few people's radar?

Re: How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

#68

Post by jaclaz »

mannykannot wrote: post #21
jaclaz wrote: post #11

Just for the record "Mitch Brenner" is the name of a character in the Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", and the photo in the profile is of the australain actor that played it, Rod Taylor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Taylor

Do you think there is any significance to this choice of pseudonym (unless the author's name is Mitch Brenner or Rod Taylor?) I cannot think of one, but I don't know the film well. Under 'Reception and Interpretation', the film's wikipedia entry says "Humanities scholar Camille Paglia wrote a monograph about the film for the BFI Film Classics series. She interprets it as an ode to the many facets of female sexuality…

>Do you think there is any significance to this choice of pseudonym

No idea.

Though I can say that often enough critics see in a work of art (be it a book, a painting, a music or a movie) even more than what the Author actually meant.

The only thing that strikes me is that - though a classic - it is not among the most reknown ones from Hitchcock among the "new generations", most probably if you ask anyone younger than - say - forty the only Hitchcock's film he/she will remember will be probably Psycho.

So, assuming that the author of the medium post is not that age or over it (and according to the "if I can get enough money for a nice early 20s retirement out of this" it should mean that the post author is twenty something), it is a "strange" choice, contradicting - possibly on purpose - other anecdata sparsed here and there (without any apparent reason), such as the use of Tinder, the reference to Bastille Day fireworks, the notion that 253 ETH are roughly "half a year salary", and possibly a few more that I overlooked and that seem "not needed" in the context.

The image conveyed is that of a single twentysomething (if male possibly gay, since the reference of Tinder is to a "he" that turned our as a creep and later there is a "I am not a rich guy") LEO (or however belonging to a security related organization) IT specialist (specifically working on monitoring coin exchanges of dubious nature), living in France (or however a place where the 14th July is celebrated with fireworks) and with a yearly wage around 120-140K US$, with a family composed of father and mother, an older brother and a younger sister, that had a work trip on monday 17 July 2017.

IMHO (and as other people already noticed) "too good to be true" or "too many data points" for someone that wishes to remain anonymous.

Re: How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

#69

Post by davidivadavid »

celticninja wrote: post #51
sgift wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the usual caveats (IANAL, this may vary per country/jurisdiction) laws and contracts are usually about intent, not pure semantics. And you'd probably have a hard time to argue that this way of 'fulfilling' the contract was the intended way.

I understand that contracts are usually written this way but an ethereum smart contract is a different kettle of fish. It is written to be a program so if you can get the program to respond to your inputs then you have fulfilled the requirements of the smart contract as it was written. Of course it may be that it was poorly worded but that is an issue for the contract writer.

Because whoever invented them called them "smart contracts" doesn't mean they're considered as such in the jurisdiction where people using the said "smart contract" are living. Matt Levine has written extensively about the subject.

Re: How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date

#70

Post by joshschreuder »

maddyboo wrote: post #67
outsidetheparty wrote: post #43

The "bad Tinder date" is completely irrelevant to the story, and is dispensed with after the first paragraph -- but it's oddly effective clickbait; I think this technique should be used more often: * Apple releases iPhone X, after a bad Tinder date * Jamie Dimon Slams Bitcoin as a ‘Fraud’ after a bad Tinder date * Turkey Signs Russian Missile Deal, Pivoting From NATO after a bad Tinder date * Structure and Interpreta…

Considering the fact that this was published under a pseudonym (as mentioned by another comment), I wonder if the Tinder details were a bit of misdirection. This person purportedly stole ~41 million dollars from a number of parties. Who knows who those people were? They could be some bad people, they could owe money to some bad people, or they might be angered enough to become bad people. That's not to mention the fa…

I'm fairly confident that it's a fictional retelling of what plausible might have happened with the actual attacker.

Otherwise, I'm not really sure why you'd want to brag about nabbing that much currency.

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