Topic: [Emergency ANN] Bitcoinica site is taken offline for security investigation - page 50. (Read 224562 times)

Ummm,

There seems to be some confusion here as to who the owner is. Afaik. Intersango haven't bought Bitcoinica but have been retained to take over the daily operations.

Before people start spreading FUD about respected members of the community they should at least have their facts straight, which it looks like quite a few peeps here don't.

@ Zhoutong/ Intersango could you guys clarify this issue so some of the idiotic mudslinging in here can get a rest.

claims that Bitcoinica has been bought out by Intersango at this point is pure speculation and highly doubtful tbh

Past announcement  hinted that Intersango team was brought on board for dev and or management/administrative position only

While I can't speak to any of your events, I have serious questions about this situation.

"intersangoed" is how I feel about it, I don't feel like I'm getting "zhoutonged"

I've seen, in the past, questions raised by exchange owners after the intersango crew "penetration tested" their sites. This raised a red flag, but I trusted them anyhow.

It seems somewhat suspicious to me to just take over this business, and then immediately have a security event that is "significant enough to justify closing down the business and force liquidating the entire customer base"  is awfully convenient if youd like to restructure the finances that you've recently acquired. It's also very convenient to have allowed a security flaw as gaping as this before "actually assuming complete control"

I'm not saying that this is the case, but I can't believe that everyone is naive enough to immediately blame a kid for stealing his way out of a company, or "being stupid enough to have a hot wallet that big" Didn't Intersango do due diligence before acquiring a stake?

I also can't believe that everyone is naive enough to think that just because someone is a "core bitcoin developer" that they're somehow above reproach. While these guys may indeed be 100% honest, how are we to truly know that?

How many times will we trust these guys? After multiple security breaches of their own, it could be that they're just not as good as everyone would like to think. It could be that one or more of them is less than honest. At this point, I have no way of knowing I can truly trust them. (regardless of whether the problem is incompetence or dishonesty)

How is it that a US$100K loss is enough to close the business and liquidate the entire customer base? This just doesn't make sense. If it does, show us the money. Transparency is the only way to true trust. And that means a 100% independent audit of the whole situation. But, if it's dishonest, the books are already cooked.

Either that, or keep running the business, and don't liquidate the customer positions (unless the customer insists on regaining access to funds asap)

It shouldn't take weeks to get this back up and running. There's something not right. I'm not sure what it is, but I don't see people asking a lot of the right questions.

How much money is being cleared by bitcionica by closing out all the positions? Show us the money. But, there's no way to independently verify any of it, really. So. Hm. Anyone willing to tally losses from this forced liquidation

The short of it is anyone would probably be a fool to trust these guys with any more money. They were knowingly negligent, at the very least, in this. They knew what they bought, and they failed to secure it. And now the customers are suffering the loss. For their gross negligence.

If you had a position at bitcoinica, how much will you lose? (or make, but I'm betting the minority are in a profit position at any given point given the astronomical spread)

I'm pretty sure I'm not willing to trust them with more money when they get back up and running. I've seen others refer to bitcionica as the ticking time bomb in bitcoin. I'm thinking this new crew running it is the real time bomb. They appear to be either incompetent, negligent, or of criminal intent. Without them making any kind of real statement, I have nothing to refute those notions. That is unfortunate.  

 I'm pretty sure I'm not willing to put more money in to find out which problem I have with these guys, and I do know one thing for damn sure: They're not communicating any better than zhoutong has historically, and that's enough to make me not want to do business with them in the future.

Absent while there is an ongoing security incident in their company is completely unacceptable. Leaving the response to a major security incident to the 17yo former owner is, um....pretty pathetic, at best, and probably suggests that there is something more going on than meets the eye. This should raise serious red flags IMO.

"Aaannd. It's gone."  

+1

Why don't the Intersango guys, the new owners, actually fucking post in the thread for once?

That's why it's important to not over-generalize and throw those "big players" in a one pot. The community gives people a second chance who made things right once before. Shit happens and as I see it Zhou has more integrity than many businessmen on the planet. I just hope the intersango guys do as well.

Sorry, but i don't think Andre had anything to do with the intersango you are thinking of.
https://www.worldbitcoinexchange.com/?page=help says his email address is [email protected] <-- notice the AU there? More: http://intersango.com.au redirects to https://www.worldbitcoinexchange.com
I would say he just found it appropriate(?) to register that domain because he was using the Intersango open source code in his exchange.
Also I don't remember seeing any mention of Andre or World Bitcoin Exchange in the Bitcoin Consultancy website or on Intersango.com. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

This is the sad part of any community based on trust and no legal documentation to work with when shit hits the fan. When money is involved trust means nothing it seems since essentially when the numbers get big enough that trust could and probably would just be used to blanket corruption.

Im amazed that when such huge theft/losses etc. occur from big-players in the community the overwhelming outcry is to give them a chance to make it right even when it happens over and over and eventually as stated by jaminunit those in charge simply dont pay up at all.

Im not refering to bitcoinica alone here but to so many other big-player theft/losses that happened over the last 12 months.

It is probably more along the lines of "those who do nothing make no mistakes".

I'm really sorry that this has happened but I just want to ask the community somthing.

Andre from worldbitcoinexchange had an intersango email address. his site goes down and no money is returned. I loose 500AUD  then intersango buys bicoinica and 2 weeks later it goes down! I dont know these guys and dont know what they do and presume they are big on these forums is there a dodgy connection here or am I connecting dots that dont exist?

..A company is a person, only in AMERICA and other white(?)-trash governments.

Which part of "limited liability company" you don't understand?

You seem to completely not understand the concept on which practically all of world's companies (except partnerships) are based on.

The company is not the owner.

Liability of the owners is limited to their investment in the company.

So what basically you said is that you are not going to do business with any companies - because all companies function like that - the owner is not liable.

A company is a person. Accept this fact.

+1

Wish there was a +1 button

So hot wallet contains keys.  Steal the keys and you steal 100% of the funds. It is entirely possible that the site DOES have a manual review process for large withdrawals.  It doesn't really matter when the attacker steals the private keys.

The hacker stole the private keys.  The private keys don't know or care what restrictions your front end might have.

Thx for the good news, zhou.

I would be happy to put a lot of money again into bitcoinica once you have worked on it to have the best security possible. You should take some time to make sure the security will be top notch once you start the site again.

Sounds good, zhou! Best of luck for getting back on track asap!

Will bitcoinica open again?

Your AML information is secure, and everything sent to [email protected] is secure too.

If your account is small, we're happy to proceed without additional evidence. However, for larger accounts with AML documents submitted (even those pending review ones), we may require the documents.