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Topic: Do the withdraw limits on MtGox make it safe from major hacks? (Read 1223 times)

sr. member
Activity: 350
Merit: 250
i don't see why scammers couldn't send in fake ID scans to any exchange and up their limits to whatever withdraw amount they want, then clean out the system.

i would hope Gox and other exchanges installed some safety measures to halt trading if the value goes too low/high too fast, must like the TSX/NYSE does
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
That is the point.  The point of crashing the price is just to temporarily allow massive transfers.

Say BTC is worth ~$5.  The $1K limit means you can only move 200 coins daily.  If an account with 80,000 coins is compromised only a small amount can be moved daily.

If the price crashes to $0.01 USD : BTC then the $1K limit would allow 100K BTC to be moved.  Once moved it is obviously irreversable.  It doesn't do the owner of the compromised account any good if trades are reset and price put back to $5.  The BTC are still gone.
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
Even if there is another major hack, Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange will just call a do-over and reset back to where the market was pre-hack anyway.
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 500
165YUuQUWhBz3d27iXKxRiazQnjEtJNG9g
It makes things safer, but not 100% safe. In the June hack the hacker deliberately crashed the price to .01 to try to transfer more coins out.  I don't know if it worked.

If someone roots the server they might be able to circumvent the transfer limits.  There are more possible levels of protection - they might store the wallet on another machine that only processes transaction batches, verifies that there are no excessive withdraws, and doesn't have any other communication with the outside world.  That's how I'd do it, but I can't say if Gox does.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
They can only withdraw 100BC or $1,000 a day (max $10,000 a month) so they can't take 20,000 coins from one account.
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