Another Cryptocurrency Heist, This Time $2 Million Stolen from Akropolis (zdnet.com) 60
$2 million worth of Dai was stolen Thursday from the cryptocurrency borrowing/lending service Akropolis, reports ZDNet — after which the service's admins paused all transactions.
These attacks have been growing in numbers since early February this year, and one of the biggest flash loan attacks took place last month, in October, when hackers stole $24 million worth of cryptocurrency assets from decentralized finance service Harvest Finance.
The good news is that Akropolis says it has already identified the attacker's Ethereum account, which would allow it to track funds as they move around the blockchain. The DeFi platform says it already notified major cryptocurrency exchanges about the hack and the attacker's wallet in an attempt to have funds frozen and prevent the attacker from laundering funds into other forms of cryptocurrencies, lose the investigators' tracks, and cash out the funds.
Akropolis said it is currently exploring ways to reimburse users for the loss.
The good news is that Akropolis says it has already identified the attacker's Ethereum account, which would allow it to track funds as they move around the blockchain. The DeFi platform says it already notified major cryptocurrency exchanges about the hack and the attacker's wallet in an attempt to have funds frozen and prevent the attacker from laundering funds into other forms of cryptocurrencies, lose the investigators' tracks, and cash out the funds.
Akropolis said it is currently exploring ways to reimburse users for the loss.
Dear hacker... (Score:3)
I'll buy some of your stolen coin for 10 cents on the dollar.
Re:Dear hacker... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll buy some of your stolen coin for 10 cents on the dollar.
The stolen coins should retain their full value and transactions should NOT be blocked.
If the exchanges and miners collude to block transactions, then they are invalidating the whole point of cryptocurrencies, which is that there is no central authority. The exchanges should be markets, not law enforcers.
If there is an intervention, then a precedent will be set and governments will demand that their rules and policies be enforced as well.
Akropolis's sloppy security is their own fault. They should suffer the consequences without polluting the ecosystem.
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Akropolis's sloppy security is their own fault. They should suffer the consequences without polluting the ecosystem.
Sorry to hear your Monet got stolen. We know it's going to be sold, but since your door was unlocked you'll have to suffer the consequences.
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Sorry to hear your Monet got stolen.
A Monet is a physical good with intrinsic value.
Cryptocurrencies are digital goods that only have value because they can be traded without restrictions.
We know it's going to be sold ...
Who is "we"? The police?
Cryptocurrency exchanges are not "police" and it is not their job to make up rules and then enforce them.
Re: Dear hacker... (Score:2)
We know it's going to be sold...
Probably not. Famous art doesn't really get sold on a market, either someone hires the thieves so they can add it to their private collection, or it's an insurance scam.
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The more this occurs, the more it will escalate. Soon they will be grabbing the people with the passwords and using USA approved enhanced interrogation techniques to access the necessary data.
That is the real problem with crypto all of it's security is tied to people's fleshy bits, the ones most subject to pain. The more criminal crypto becomes the more violent it will become, when it comes to hundreds of millions and the right genitals on the line, those millions will disappear. They have every right to pa
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You live in some deluded world of underground fantasy. I buy tea, beef jerky, and electronics from overstock with crypto and the 'criminals' are mostly just consumers buying goods they'll use while visiting with friends no differently than you might a bottle of wine you brought to a dinner party.
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If the exchanges and miners collude to block transactions, then they are invalidating the whole point of cryptocurrencies, which is that there is no central authority.
But that's always been the thing with cryptocurrencies, there's definitely, absolutely no centralised control, except when there is because of yet another hack or theft. But afterwards there's really, we-really-mean-it-this-time no centralised control. Until the next hack.
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What do the hacks have to do with centralized control? I have and use crypto and I've never lost anything in a hack. Must not be too central.
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That ship has already sailed for Ethereum. After the DAO hack in 2016, they (the community in general, but pushed strongly by the network's founders) forked the currency to negate the effects of the hack.
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That is a ridiculous position. A lightly regulated or unrelated market place is still free to self regulate.
Even in the "wild west" a well known bad actor might be told "your money is no good here", and encouraged to move along. We can perfectly well believe that anti-laundering/tax evasion/trafficing/etc laws may be worse than the disease they are intended to treat while still holding that some behaviors just don't need to be tolerated when they are known.
Two parties might make different choices as to if y
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"Two parties might make different choices as to if you bootleg movie business should freeze you out of transacting on their platform, but most might agree that your business crypto-ransoming hospital systems during the pandemic is bad juju and if people decide they don't want to touch you or the associated coin, I don't see anything wrong with that at all."
I do. If I'm dropping a load of firewood to your house and you are paying in crypto I need to be able to accept payment from you without knowing who you
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You can go thru the ledger and see if the the coins I am trying to pay you with have passed thru a published list of suspect hands, just like anyone else.
The race will be for bad guys to try and spend the coin before it gets black listed.
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Right... but this doesn't require that anyone could do so. It requires everyone do so in order to support some imaginary right of a third party fool who has sour grapes about being parted from his money.
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Well, yes and no. Banks are highly regulated. Apparently any random incompetent can open a "cryptocurrency exchange". Just one more reason why this stuff does not qualify as a "currency".
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"Banks are highly regulated. Apparently any random incompetent can open a "cryptocurrency exchange". Just one more reason why this stuff does not qualify as a "currency"."
All I've heard is a reason why exchanges aren't banks. You've been babbling this nonsensical attacks about crypto since bitcoin hit dollar parity. Imagine what your position would be if you'd bought it then instead of hating on it.
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And in the real world I am just pointing out some facts and you are fanatical.
Regulation is what makes banks secure and reliable. Absence of regulation is what makes cryptocoin exchanges vulnerable, because it allows them to do things on the cheap. Well, until they get robbed. This is completely expected and happened to banks routinely before they became regulated.
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Actually in the US anyone who exchanges dollars for crypto and vice versa has to be registered and essentially regulated as a bank.
"until they get robbed. This is completely expected and happened to banks routinely before they became regulated"
Actually it routinely happened to banks AFTER they became regulated as well. There is also nothing stopping a private insurance comparable to FDIC from being created to ensure deposits. None of this has anything to do with being a currency. The entire point of the cur
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The stolen coins should retain their full value and transactions should NOT be blocked.
You suggested that we let some bad actor do whatever they want with a crypto currency and there should not be any repercussion for the bad actor from the other holders of that crypto.
I disagree.
In this case, there would be two bad actors.
The first, A, is the one who got the $2,000,000.
The second, B, is the exchanges and miners who collude to freeze the first one's funds.
If the crypto community is going to let A take from B and do nothing about it, then we should let B take from A and do nothing about that e
You missed two things (Score:2)
I stole a car. Wanna buy it?
I believe if you think about it you can tell the difference between chasing down crooks, looking for them, vs choosing not to knowingly buy stolen property.
Police actively go looking for criminals. People with any sense of decency don't knowingly assist the criminals by fencing the stollen loot. I'm sure you can see the difference, now that I've pointed it out. You're a smart guy, so I'm sure you just overlooked that fact because you hadn't yet thought it through.
The stolen coi
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Nonsense. They've no more stolen the coins than any vendor who sells a good at a premium over wholesale. A con is a con and in either case the person with the goods was outplayed by the person who now has them.
"Of course there *is* a central authority that is somewhat relevant. 18 U.S. Code S.â2315. "Sale or receipt of stolen goods, securities, moneys" - whoever does so shall be imprisoned for no more than 10 years for each offense."
Luckily there are no goods, securities, or monies involved.
"You so see
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Sophist nonsense. What is justice? and what is a man's due? There is no way to define these things other that want in a in world of scarcity. Your proposed moral system does not allow for human society of any kind.
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"What is justice? and what is a man's due? There is no way to define these things"
Just so. Which is why the definitions which are applied tend to benefit those best able to con others. What is society but a few trying to be stronger than any individual by convincing many others to band together and fight on their behalf. In this case a hacker outwitted these people and is therefore more fit and possesses superior merit. Having done so means he is more likely to make sound choices with the disposition of the
Blockchain is newsworthy but ... (Score:2)
... for all the wrong reasons.
Uh oh (Score:3)
Can't wait for the tulip brigade to chime in. This is why you don't store crypto currency outside of your wallet.
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Yes, you can't compare crypto to tulips because tulips actually have a use in that you can put them in a vase and make your home look pretty.
The mass adoption that cryptards dream of is never going to happen while theft and fraudulent transactions are irreversible. And to do that, you need a central authority.
The world of cryptocurrencies is built on fraud, theft, market manipulation and scams. Now tell my granny why she should put her savings into it.
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Why would your granny buy GBP or Jordan dinar to get rich? Same concept. You don’t know anything about crypto.
Cryptos are irrelevant - Only Bitcoin matters! (Score:2)
Bitcoin matters not because it's fast, cheap, or easy; but only because nobody controls it. It grew spontaneously in the wilds of the internet without a central planner. After it, no alt could ever recreate this, as there's no spontaneous market demand for a less secure Bitcoin.
https://twitter.com/saifedean/... [twitter.com]
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Crypto as ubiquitous as Bitcoin have value if for any other reason as to put immutable data on an infinitely persistent blockchain. The whole *this-shit-has-no-value-like-flowers* may as well be AI generated white noise.
funny (Score:2)
Bitcoin theft isn't an if... (Score:4, Insightful)
The best security that physical money has is that it's physical. Your bank actually has physical money in a vault somewhere. Now, when you go to 7-11 and buy a Snickers bar with your credit card, your bank doesn't actually send money. It just calls up the chain's bank and the two agree to update their databases. That's easy. BUT if you tried to purchase $24 million in Snickers bars, your bank would have to put $24 million in REAL PHYSICAL paper dollars on a truck and drive it across town to the chain's bank vault. The physical money would actually have to move.
That's what makes banks inherently safe places to store money. If you had $24 millions in your bank account, and someone hacked your bank password (and you didn't have 2FA turned on, you dolt!) and they tried to transfer out all of the money in your account, they would fail. The bank would call you and ask why are you trying to move that much money without giving them a heads up first? The hacker wouldn't get a dime of that money (this is why there aren't armies of hackers around the world trying to hack into your bank's web server to steal all database money. It doesn't work like that.) (And, why in the world are you stock piling money in a bank account? You should at least park it in treasury bonds.)
But with crypto-assets, you have no such security. If someone can hack your account, your assets are gone and never retrievable. There is ultimately no protection, by design.
Re:Bitcoin theft isn't an if... (Score:5, Informative)
Your bank actually has physical money in a vault somewhere.
No, they don't.
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The main point however is it is reversible and it stands.
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The main point however is it is reversible and it stands.
The main point, that bank deposits are reliable because they are backed by physical currency, is nonsense.
Most dollars exist nowhere as physical currency.
Bank deposits are reliable because they are insured by the federal government.
Before the feds insured banks, they were not reliable, and runs were common.
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There are 2 points here, the transactions are reversible, and that they are backed by physical money, the important one is that they are reversible. That fact they store physical money in kind of irrelevant, and I disagree with the original post on that.
The later points the the fed insures banks is a completely different point, I actually think the fed should not insure banks at all if they cannot behave in a manner that instills confidence in them by their customers then they should go under, that is a fre
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The point is, the physical money exists in a vault somewhere. The notion that the money is and doesn't exist is a myth. I've worked in major central bank vaults, they are real.
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"The point is, the physical money exists in a vault somewhere."
The point is, no, it doesn't. A bank's balance with the Fed are entries in an electronic ledger, nothing more.
"The notion that the money is and doesn't exist is a myth. I've worked in major central bank vaults, they are real."
Yes, when you worked as a guard at the vault, I'm sure the piles of money they kept on hand to ensure people who wanted to make cash withdrawals could do so looked very impressive to you. It was, however, only a small fra
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Insightful? Mods, get a clue.
All that money? Most of it exists only as numbers in an electronic ledger.
Did I miss a <sarcasm> tag? Am I a victim of Poes law?
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The notion that most money exists as electronic database numbers is mostly false. Where that comes from is that the day to day money transfers is electronic. But if you tried to move big numbers then the bank would have to move physical money.
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No. The electronic system banks use for moving large amounts of money is called SWIFT. https://www.investopedia.com/a... [investopedia.com]. There was a big story a couple of years ago about how lax security at a Bangladesh bank enabled crooks to force a transfer of $250 million to Sri Lanka and Phillippines, where it was quickly laundered to be untraceable and unrecoverable, though they did manage to get aboiut $18 million back. Note that at no time did the crooks need to take possession of physical money.
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"BUT if you tried to purchase $24 million in Snickers bars, your bank would have to put $24 million in REAL PHYSICAL paper dollars on a truck and drive it across town to the chain's bank vault. The physical money would actually have to move."
Um, no. Banks haven't worked that way in decades. It's all done by electronic transfer. The only notable difference between it and crypto-currency is that there is a central authority controlling it.
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You seem to be posting from 1920... how quaint.
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Snickers got introduced only in 1930. Gold stopped being a reserve for dollars in 1933, so I suppose he has to come from somewhere around that period? ;)
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1934 is the date when the federal government stopped printing bills bigger than $100, so that's a pretty good date for figuring when physical bills stopped being the main store of value in US currency.
Re:Bitcoin theft isn't an if... (Score:5, Informative)
Only about 10% of US dollars are physical.
https://money.howstuffworks.co... [howstuffworks.com]
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The best security that physical money has is that it's physical.
Except that it really isn't. The Federal Reserve is stealing the value of that currency right out from under you every time they print extra bills.
Re: Bitcoin theft isn't an if... (Score:2)
Top Sekrit (Score:1)
Inside jobs &suckers thinking this is "investi (Score:1)
Unlike a bank who has an insurance policy or agency, these rando organizations rely 100% on the trust of suckers. It's pretty easy to be a sucker -- all you have to do is spend real money to get a magic number which you then give to someone to hold for you. You then pretend you have an "asset" of a cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency is not a currency. You can't spend it. All those places that say "we accept bitcoin" don't accept bitcoin. They allow you to convert it to fiat currency so you can buy their goo
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good luck trying to talk logic to the cryptocoin shills. Hilarious one of the touted advantages over money was "security"... yet here in this article we have talk about "attempt" to try to freeze funds hoping other services will take action... when they don't have to.
Sure, someone could hack and steal from my bank account. Yet I'd lose no money, not a cent. If someone hacks your wallet, you're screwed.
Elgin (Score:4, Funny)
My experience with Bitcoin Recovery (Score:1)
trace and recover stolen bitcoin (Score:1)