Millions of Dogecoin Stolen Over Christmas 132
Kenseilon writes "The Verge reports that millions of Dogecoins — an alternative cryptocurrency — was stolen after the service DogeWallet was hacked. DogeWallet worked like a bank account for the currency, and the attackers modified it to make sure all transactions ended up in a wallet of their choice. This latest incident is just one in the long (and growing) list of problems that cryptocurrencies are currently facing. It brings to mind the incident where bitcoin exchange service GBL vanished and took a modest amount of Bitcoins with them. While not a similar case, it highlights the difficulties with trusting service provides in this market."
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares?
Dogecoin was originally a satire "cryptocurrency" anyway, the fact that it got "hacked" just prove the point even more.
Reductio Ad Absurdum is not a defense (Score:4, Insightful)
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
At least this time it's of a currency worth very, very little, so losses aren't that great and there are even more great minds thinking about how to solve cryptocurrency security problems. The end-user human will always be the weakest link, and the trust that the end user places on others always the most vulnerable part.
Internet in a nutshell (Score:4, Insightful)
I still can't tell how much of this is a joke and how much is real...
What's next? Dolancoin, featuring a crudely drawn homicidal duck? Frycoin, urging people to quietly and quickly accept the "money"?
Regardless, any of these is basically the same as Monopoly money. Next, we'll have reports of how a truckload of monopoly money got stolen. It'll be just as relevant, if not more, since something happened to someone (said truck was stolen).
Re:Haven't people learned by now . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say it's more like carrying around a wad of cash and getting pissed off because it fell out of your wallet. You have no idea what the qualifications are of the people who design and build these crypto-coin websites. It's not like they have any regulatory and testing requirements you can point to as any assurance that they're at all secure.
The same goes for any black or grey market website. So what if the site uses SSL and is "Verisign Approved" -- that tells you nothing about their back-end security (or lack thereof.)
Re:Internet in a nutshell (Score:2, Insightful)