Technical analysis of the EliteCoin heist

cassius69

sr. member

Activity: 280

Merit: 250

Quote from: johnray on July 28, 2014, 07:08:42 PM

Elitecoin was a concern; This is one of the worst example of what can be done.

Targeting fair mature coins that we are sure of the implementation, available with a non tricked block explorer, is the only way on the long run.

Sadly, exchanges, and big farms play a short term strategy where 'scam' is everywhere, and threaten the very existence of alternates.

they do.

so we have to quit playing their game.

learn how to perform fundamental analysis on 'real altcoins' that have a track record of clean updates and speculate on those.

new alts are mostly made by scammers.

rikkejohn

hero member

Activity: 644

Merit: 500

Just checking the numbers, and I'm not surprised mining is almost non-existent.

The reward is 1 coin a block. From 9409 mined blocks, there should be 9409 elite.

Total money supply is actually 110,644.83045014

That averages 11.7593793176745669 coins a block.

In other words, for every 1 coin mined, the elitecoindevs get an unofficial 10.7593793176745669 coins

It makes me laugh that Bittrex describe it as a "possible premine"

This is the biggest premine ever.

Anyone good at mathematics?

I make it at something like a 1000% premine.
.

johnray

member

Activity: 104

Merit: 10

Elitecoin was a concern; This is one of the worst example of what can be done.

Targeting fair mature coins that we are sure of the implementation, available with a non tricked block explorer, is the only way on the long run.

Sadly, exchanges, and big farms play a short term strategy where 'scam' is everywhere, and threaten the very existence of alternates.

gjhiggins

legendary

Activity: 2254

Merit: 1290

Quote from: Dimitry on July 26, 2014, 03:28:30 PM

Could any one tell me how to read the code and what to look for? for hidden premine.. or maybe other usefull things!

Reading code for sense is a learned skill, directing people what to look for also requires them to have some familiarity with programming code semantics.

The best I can offer is a basic “smell test”. Find a related coin that's above suspicion and perform a simple visual comparison. If there are differences where usually there aren't, then it fails the smell test.

I posted a how-to:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.8066207

The bitbucket repos we set up includes zenifications of elitecoin and its cloneparent, sumcoin. A meld comparison shows up the differences reasonably clearly. See if elitecoin passes the smell test for you.

HTH

Graham

Dimitry

hero member

Activity: 896

Merit: 501

Could any one tell me how to read the code and what to look for? for hidden premine.. or maybe other usefull things!

Seems bittrex is not willing to put any time in this, then we have to do it ourselfs

Any help is welcome

digitalindustry

hero member

Activity: 798

Merit: 1000

‘Try to be nice’

Quote from: ocminer on July 26, 2014, 10:56:23 AM

Hey guys,

since nobody is replying in the Thread concerning my questions, I'm starting a new thread here.

Usually I'm checking coins b4 adding them to suprnova, at least i'm doing some preliminary checks (no virus, "bad" code, no code where the first block is like 500.000 coins while the coinsupply is only 50.000 .. etc). I tried to do that on Elite too, but the "usual" places where moved into other files, so I skipped it and since I saw other "big" pools on it I did not think anything bad as they're also supposed to do checks, don't they ?

(no, i will not do that again, don't worry

)

However, the next morning I saw coinsupply tripled and on bittrex coins were dumped for about 20 BTC which made me look again and its weird..

I've set up an Block Explorer on a old machine as I could not find any online (its hell slow, please bear with me

):
http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/

The source is here:
https://github.com/dimecoinco/elitecoin (thx to rikkejohn)

The first block pays out 20.000 to one address:
http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/block/00000ef54a645ff81b0d06b5fa10c2e0c4cbfd1af6448cc8747978fae96e6722

But this 20.000 payout is not reflected in the money supply, can someone point me to the place in the code where this is surpressed ?

When we take a closer look at some suspicious blocks, you see this address again:
http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/address/dMFkHRK1WRFVQLBvozBeKYAWfaAFQUsy1y

Especially Block 3448 and 4338 (which straaaange numbers

) pay 20.000 AGAIN to the dev's address .. The source is ALSO the dev's address so this is basically a double spent (or a double generation?):

http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/block/000000000025fe115ebd4ca762e1525c9889b3b9dbff29c6bb3c685bf953323a

(I dont know why 1000 coins go to the other address)

At block 4338 these coins get moved (probably to bittrex or so):
http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/address/dLvQf3686DgCPZBuHCixK9DBi8CMoeHCDe

Anyone got an idea how actually that worked ?

For that double generation/spend you usually also need a decent pool with large hashrate for this...

Thx !

PS: Oh and stop that shit and fud about bittrex please, you cannot blame the cardealer when you let your car repair by some strange workshop and then your brakes do not work - the only mistake they made - they did add it even though there was no block explorer available, which I hope they won't in the future..

yep - this is this issue that's "Not a big issue" apparently by other peers in the crypto community !

hope you sort it.

Dimitry

hero member

Activity: 896

Merit: 501

Mintpal was big few months ago had little problem with hack and are left for dead. Bittrex is walking the same path diff route.

damiano

legendary

Activity: 1246

Merit: 1000

103 days, 21 hours and 10 minutes.

Quote from: Dimitry on July 26, 2014, 01:39:21 PM

Quote from: damiano on July 26, 2014, 12:56:24 PM

I'm sorta glad this happened.

This will make things more strict on Bittrex. If you lost that's just to bad, you all knew what you were getting into with all these shitcoins coming out daily. This isn't Bittrex's fault, it's your own.

Moving forward Bittrex shouldn't even acknowledge newbie dev's.

I'm glad this happend to. Bittrex shows true colors and it will be a short term exchange that has no vision for future, happy I found it out now!

I doubt this will effect its business.

Mintpal is dead and Poloniex isn't that popular.

Bter is just alright

When you buy a shitcoin you are taking a risk

Dimitry

hero member

Activity: 896

Merit: 501

Quote from: damiano on July 26, 2014, 12:56:24 PM

I'm sorta glad this happened.

This will make things more strict on Bittrex. If you lost that's just to bad, you all knew what you were getting into with all these shitcoins coming out daily. This isn't Bittrex's fault, it's your own.

Moving forward Bittrex shouldn't even acknowledge newbie dev's.

I'm glad this happend to. Bittrex shows true colors and it will be a short term exchange that has no vision for future, happy I found it out now!

tylerderden

copper member

Activity: 1162

Merit: 1025

Quote from: ocminer on July 26, 2014, 11:30:37 AM

Quote from: czvezda on July 26, 2014, 11:25:11 AM

Quote from: ocminer on July 26, 2014, 10:56:23 AM

Hey guys,

since nobody is replying in the Thread concerning my questions, I'm starting a new thread here.

Usually I'm checking coins b4 adding them to suprnova, at least i'm doing some preliminary checks (no virus, "bad" code, no code where the first block is like 500.000 coins while the coinsupply is only 50.000 .. etc). I tried to do that on Elite too, but the "usual" places where moved into other files, so I skipped it and since I saw other "big" pools on it I did not think anything bad as they're also supposed to do checks, don't they ?

(no, i will not do that again, don't worry

)

However, the next morning I saw coinsupply tripled and on bittrex coins were dumped for about 20 BTC which made me look again and its weird..

I've set up an Block Explorer on a old machine as I could not find any online (its hell slow, please bear with me

):
http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/

The source is here:
https://github.com/dimecoinco/elitecoin (thx to rikkejohn)

The first block pays out 20.000 to one address:
http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/block/00000ef54a645ff81b0d06b5fa10c2e0c4cbfd1af6448cc8747978fae96e6722

But this 20.000 payout is not reflected in the money supply, can someone point me to the place in the code where this is surpressed ?

When we take a closer look at some suspicious blocks, you see this address again:
http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/address/dMFkHRK1WRFVQLBvozBeKYAWfaAFQUsy1y

Especially Block 3448 and 4338 (which straaaange numbers

) pay 20.000 AGAIN to the dev's address .. The source is ALSO the dev's address so this is basically a double spent (or a double generation?):

http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/block/000000000025fe115ebd4ca762e1525c9889b3b9dbff29c6bb3c685bf953323a

(I dont know why 1000 coins go to the other address)

At block 4338 these coins get moved (probably to bittrex or so):
http://blocks.suprnova.cc:2750/address/dLvQf3686DgCPZBuHCixK9DBi8CMoeHCDe

Anyone got an idea how actually that worked ?

For that double generation/spend you usually also need a decent pool with large hashrate for this...

Thx !

PS: Oh and stop that shit and fud about bittrex please, you cannot blame the cardealer when you let your car repair by some strange workshop and then your brakes do not work - the only mistake they made - they did add it even though there was no block explorer available, which I hope they won't in the future..

Thanks for setting up the block explorer.
I did some analysis on my own. I don't think that 3448 involved double spending, it was just 1k transfer to another address, one can see 20k out and 19k in to the same premine address
In block 1 premine happened because of this:
https://github.com/dimecoinco/elitecoin/blob/394f19b04a49bf79368c29b7a3b617999f95acb5/src/main.cpp#L1567
i.e. for block 1 checking of coinbase reward was skipped so the dev could mine anything.
Regarding moneysupply, the "dev" first defined the variable ly:
https://github.com/dimecoinco/elitecoin/blob/394f19b04a49bf79368c29b7a3b617999f95acb5/src/rpcwallet.cpp#L47
and then subtracted it from the actual money supply:
https://github.com/dimecoinco/elitecoin/blob/394f19b04a49bf79368c29b7a3b617999f95acb5/src/rpcwallet.cpp#L94

Wow thanks czveda ! You made my day, I totally overlooked that "ly" variable there.. I saw that +1 at the block height and already thought that no checks were performed for block 1 but I missed "ly" totally.

Thank you very much, that explains it pretty much !

there was a post a few weeks ago by a guy showing exactly how people are doing this, my guess the "dev" saw this post and tried it for himself and it worked apparently.

Wulfcastle

hero member

Activity: 546

Merit: 500

Could someone post a TL;DR version of what happened with Elite? Was it a scam or did an attack take place against it that caused double spends?

damiano

legendary

Activity: 1246

Merit: 1000

103 days, 21 hours and 10 minutes.

I'm sorta glad this happened.

This will make things more strict on Bittrex. If you lost that's just to bad, you all knew what you were getting into with all these shitcoins coming out daily. This isn't Bittrex's fault, it's your own.

Moving forward Bittrex shouldn't even acknowledge newbie dev's.

bit1

legendary

Activity: 938

Merit: 1000

Quote from: cassius69 on July 26, 2014, 12:46:43 PM

quit supporting new coin launches by newbie devs.

its the easiest way to solve this problem.

+1

ocminer

legendary

Activity: 2688

Merit: 1240

Quote from: paradigmflux on July 26, 2014, 12:26:34 PM

OCMiner, I run a couple multipools - let me know if you'd like to share any of the VPS cost for hosting the block explorers or anything. Or perhaps we could both host each of the coins explorers and link to one another's explorers to prove that the data is untampered with?

Good idea, I'll get in touch with you soon !

cassius69

sr. member

Activity: 280

Merit: 250

quit supporting new coin launches by newbie devs.

its the easiest way to solve this problem.

bit1

legendary

Activity: 938

Merit: 1000

Anyway Elite keep in crypto I think, only need change slogan ¨20000 Elites + a little premine hidden of Dev¨ Devs need money to travel and make his things Grin

bit1

legendary

Activity: 938

Merit: 1000

Quote from: Dimitry on July 26, 2014, 12:24:59 PM

No consider your investment lost! Better make your own coin, name it Elite you will have more succes then waiting for this to recover! Because that just aint possible

If I think about clone a coin and launch it, it will be forked in a second.......... like to old scrypt........ Cheesy

paradigmflux

sr. member

Activity: 378

Merit: 254

small fry

OCMiner, I run a couple multipools - let me know if you'd like to share any of the VPS cost for hosting the block explorers or anything. Or perhaps we could both host each of the coins explorers and link to one another's explorers to prove that the data is untampered with?

Dimitry

hero member

Activity: 896

Merit: 501

No consider your investment lost! Better make your own coin, name it Elite you will have more succes then waiting for this to recover! Because that just aint possible

bit1

legendary

Activity: 938

Merit: 1000

Quote from: ocminer on July 26, 2014, 12:16:23 PM

Quote from: bit1 on July 26, 2014, 12:07:14 PM

In other words my wallet in bittrex now have value like to shit if sell now, but what about in next years??? I mean I buy expensive shit it drop
nearly to 1 sat, but tomorrow? Huh

Keep it.. Maybe someday there will "Scam Busters" which are collecting coins from good scams ^^

all is possible at this point, what about "Scammers biggest of Crypto" many peoples only will delete this wallets but only a few will keep it

Topic: Technical analysis of the EliteCoin heist (Read 2891 times)