Sophisticated $25M ethereum heist took about 12 seconds, DOJ says
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They won't, they'll hire these talented people, the government needs them for shady things of their own.
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So, the data has value and stealing the ones and zeroes makes you a criminal because it has value? Who says it has value? Why is this a legal matter?
Does the FBI get involved if a person steals someones virtual goods in a video game? What if it's something that you never paid any money for? How does something have value to be protected in such a way? How come when this happens in EVE online no one goes to jail?
I'm so confused where the bits and data that are just made up scores and points warrant legal financial securities protection.
Does the FBI get involved if a person steals someones virtual goods in a video game? What if it's something that you never paid any money for? How does something have value to be protected in such a way? How come when this happens in EVE online no one goes to jail?
I'm so confused where the bits and data that are just made up scores and points warrant legal financial securities protection.
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Hah! They were even smarter, because if they had googled for the opposite, it might have drawn some unwelcome covert attention. Most countries that the USA will extradite to have a reciprocal agreement - which is what they were seeking to avoid.
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The "fiat banks" I've worked with have been far more competent at it. When the only way to submit your ID is through an app that doesn't work, well, that's just stonewalling through deliberate incompetence.
Fortunately I only lost a few hundred dollars so it was a relatively cheap lesson.
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Always curious what mental gymnastics white collar criminals go through in coming to the conclusion that they will never get caught. Gone from smart with a promising career educated by an elite school with all of its opportunities to a common crook. Wisdom >> Smarts.
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As yokem55 mentioned, that hasn't been a thing since 2016 when The DAO was hacked, and Ethereum miners collectively decided that it was in their best interests to rewrite history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic The entire Ethereum blockchain since then has been built on this.
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Perhaps if they are cyber security experts for a child's lemonade stand but if I had a company with bank accounts I wouldn't want to be holding the bag when they recidivate (67% chance).
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Well, the people I buy food and housing from think paper money and those digits are real, and that's all I really need.
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That’s kind of how I feel, but when they then cash out the money to real money it has real impacts on everyone else.
but then if crypto has Swiss cheese unregulated security, why should the government commit to defending this? Next step is regulation but then that fully legitimizes it and is going to be very costly for congress to build up the expertise to know how to fix roll ups.
Would be ironic if all roll ups had to be run by the federal reserve or reputable banks and thus these types of trust violation attacks wouldn’t be possible.
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It's very unfortunate that they got caught. The act of exposing crypto and the sacred blockchain as fraudulent was extremely valuable to society; they deserve to keep the rewards of the heist that brought us that information.
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Rooting against these guys does feel a bit like cheering for the house in Blackjack.
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Despite this all being on the blockchain, it feels like a financial crime to me. They intercepted transactions and stole the proceeds. This isn't a victimless crime - people lost cryptocurrency in the process.
While it's not hard cash they stole, they are real transactions that were intercepted. Really, it's no different to hacking into a service that maintains user account balances and stealing that balance. Those account balances are similarly "imaginary", but anyone doing that would surely be prosecuted in such a case.
Where it would get more interesting is if they had found a way to exploit the blockchain to create cryptocurrency outside of normal processes. In that case, where nothing is actually stolen, I think there would be a much more interesting and nuanced debate about blockchain exploits.
While it's not hard cash they stole, they are real transactions that were intercepted. Really, it's no different to hacking into a service that maintains user account balances and stealing that balance. Those account balances are similarly "imaginary", but anyone doing that would surely be prosecuted in such a case.
Where it would get more interesting is if they had found a way to exploit the blockchain to create cryptocurrency outside of normal processes. In that case, where nothing is actually stolen, I think there would be a much more interesting and nuanced debate about blockchain exploits.
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Hopefully this is a fatal flaw in blockchain and we can forget all the idiocy and wasted power that go with it.
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If the code let it happen, it has to have been legit, right? I see no reason for any authorities to intervene here.
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Even if it was a useful way to buy basic things... enlightened.doggo's idea that inflation can only happen with regular currency is hilarious. If the price of an Egg McMuffin goes up because the suppliers and deliverers of eggs are charging more, that doesn't mean the currency was "devalued" due to some weakness inherent to the currency. Those companies raised prices because the companies they buy things from have raised prices, due to supply issues, labor costs, etc., etc. If all of those transactions were being done in crypto, the companies would still have the same reasons for raising prices. There is no stable magic number for the "real" value of an egg in Ethereum any more than there is in dollars.
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I don't know, I've always believed that the whole thing was a house of cards, and all it took was two really smart people to rip the entire edifice down in 12 seconds. Maybe this will finally be the end of the Crapto trend.
Maybe they only had their own greedy self-interest at heart, but the truth is they've possibly done the world a massive favour by blowing a gaping hole in the Crapto bro's libertarian utopian BS. Pretty hilarious to me too that it also doubled as an act of epic self-sabotage.
But hey, they're smart, and smart people rarely see actual prison time. I'm sure there's an alphabet agency who'd love to get them on the payroll.
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Presumably with actual real $dollars involved - yes. But that’s the difference, isnt it? It’s actual real $dollars…
If I convince you to give me 1,000,000 world of Warcraft coins for a condo in Florida that doesn’t exist, is that 20 years too?
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It's unlikely they'll see the inside of a real prison. People smart enough to leave the blockchain priesthood with egg on its face are a valuable resource to somebody. I'm sure an alphabet agency will be interested in arranging for some kind of a deal.
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Yet another example of how people don't appreciate how crime is its own skill set... Any otherwise-intelligent bro thinks "I know mastered the code, so no one can catch me!"
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To quote Sleaford Mods, "It's a fake card, in a fake bank-machine - there's no consideration"/
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It's possible that the FBI found the search history on their computers after seizing them.
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Can you imagine what sort of crimes these people would commit if they applied their skills to alternate fields, such as biotech or nanotechnology? The fields where if ethics are transgressed, we all die? Perhaps time to start concentrating on morals and ethics in university courses?
Paraphrasing a quote I once read: using your mind to commit a crime is no different to others relying on brute force.
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Oh good, we're heading for a future where "Ransomware Infection" isn't metaphorical aren't we?
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We have been there for a few years now:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7a...ternet-connected-chastity-cage-demands-ransom
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lost_packet
Ars Praefectus
It never really said how there were caught other than they followed the money. It sounds like no one caught them from their methods, and how could they if that sophisticated. It seems like they brute forced it by seeing where the money went and maybe found people of interest. If they really did set up a bunch of shell companies, that would be a lot easier to trace back than some zero day crypto exploit only a handful of people could understand much less do.
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Maybe this is the Great Filter in its very nascent stage. How does civilisation prevent a handful of people, making use of virtually unlimited leverage, from annihilating the entire population?
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Fuzzypiggy
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Don't know why but it reminds me of the Big Bang episde where Sheldon tries to go off-grid by removing the signage from his apartment building, forgets that his girlfriend has been there several times and is shocked when she comes by and knocks on his door!
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Researchers at the Sackler institute assure me that no-one would ever try to get rich by creating a epidemic and then selling the treatment.
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In the year Twenty Twenty Four, it seems most humans still have this child like assumption that if no one is physically looking over your shoulder your google searches are in some way private, which is hilarious and very helpful for the Law it seems!
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What is the usd equivalent of WoW coins? Etherium has a real usd conversion rate - theft via fraud of intangible property with a real value is still a crime.
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Not bad…I am impressed as well. My first hack was in 1971-72; got into a banking system IBM host. For 6 months.
Was never detected. Did NOT steal anything except massive amounts of compute time for a physics project.
I doubt this is the last, and for all the FBI bluster, they are not going Pokemon and catching them all.
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enlightened.doggo
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Well I've moved very large sums of cash and cryptocurrency between US exchanges, banks and wallets without a single issue ever. It's like cooking I guess.
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