Topic: The upside to the MtGox hax (Read 4325 times)

In that sense I can sympatise with MtGox, but on the other hand.....

• They didn't add even the simplest of extra sec checks to their login
• They didn't assume the worst and proceed as such when reports started surfacing that accounts were being hacked
• Their database should have been natively encrypted, performance issues are not a customers concern

Tight security is a pretty important form of prevention.  Mt Gox can rollback transactions as much as they like.  The few members of the general public who follow bitcoin got the message that 'bitcoin got hacked', regardless of the real details.

The world does operate on prevention.  That's why balconies have railings, dangerous areas are often fenced off and industrial machinery has physical and electronic barriers to prevent accidents.

The world doesn't operate on prevention, because prevention doesn't work.

They were able to reverse transactions and roll the site back to the way it was before the invalid order.  They also had mechanisms in place to reduce the amount of irreversible damage that could happen before the attack was noticed and stopped.

Those sound like pretty damn good safeguards to me.

Yes. Low liquidity and a front loaded bitcoin distribution with a few very potent early adopters will do that. If don't like the ability of these people to crash the market at will, stay away from Bitcoin.

The market went from around $17 to $0.01 within minutes.  Where were the safeguards, or is a 99.95% drop in the market considered normal?

Unless you are completely wrong, and the attack was largely contained by the safeguards built into their system.  You know, the safeguards that you for some strange reason assume don't exist.

There is no overeacting here.  Mt Gox had no automatic safeguards and logic checks to ensure the market could not be compromised.  Gox is no longer a Magic The Gathering trading site.  They are dealing with serious amounts of money with no auditing or regulation.  How was taking a BTC's value down 99.95% within minutes not stopped by the exchange?  I know the rabid libetarians will say it was the will of the market, and if it needs to fall to zero and back again then so be it.  Witness the sheer unbridled greed of some posters on this forum who managed to snag BTCs at 99% off, and now whining that the trades will be rolled back.

We truly don't know the extent of this attack yet.  If it was done properly, the script should have transferred out as many BTCs as possible before the market was shut.  Those cannot be retrieved.

This will most certainly make them reassess their site security (though I suspect this was already something they were doing prior to this latest incident).

MtGox needs to be made secure as any site can be. It needs to employ the latest web security technology and needs to be run by experts in the field. Its not like MtGox doesnt have the funding to be able to do this either so there's no excuses.

This incident I believe is being handled well by the site owner/s. At the end of the day it will be 'business as usual' and no-one (including those who seemed to temporarily gain from this scammers actions) will be any the worse off.

I'll be allowing MtGox some more time to harden their security. These things take time. Im sure neither they nor anyone else remotely interested in Bitcoin could have foreseen the growth explosion that was about to occur just a couple of months ago. I also think people expecting MtGox to have been prepared and able to defend against experienced hackers is unreasonable. MtGox knows it unreasonable which I suspect is why put the maximum $1000/day withdrawal limit in place - just in case something like this should happen. But I wont be waiting forever. MtGox needs to act and act fast if traders are to maintain any level of confidence in their site. To not act will result in huge financial loss and others will pick up the ball and do what is required to secure traders against this type of attack. For now I'll let MtGox run with the ball - its their call as to where they and we go from here.

There is no overeacting here.  Mt Gox had no automatic safeguards and logic checks to ensure the market could not be compromised.  Gox is no longer a Magic The Gathering trading site.  They are dealing with serious amounts of money with no auditing or regulation.  How was taking a BTC's value down 99.95% within minutes not stopped by the exchange?  I know the rabid libetarians will say it was the will of the market, and if it needs to fall to zero and back again then so be it.  Witness the sheer unbridled greed of some posters on this forum who managed to snag BTCs at 99% off, and now whining that the trades will be rolled back.

We truly don't know the extent of this attack yet.  If it was done properly, the script should have transferred out as many BTCs as possible before the market was shut.  Those cannot be retrieved.

We know very little as of yet.  I think you may be overreacting.  At worst someone stole tons of coins, at best they got 1000 USD from a site that makes tons and tons each day.  One is a huge deal, the other is a minor annoyance.

This is quite true. And it showed the vulnerability of one central exchange. Hopefully that'll become more decentralized as a result, too.

This hack was inevitable.  Mt Gox deals with millions of dollars per month and was ripe for the picking.  I bet there's a million dollars stored in accounts on the site right now, and millions more in BTC.  The withdrawl limit saved Mt Gox, this time, but next time they won't be so lucky.

I am unlikely to use Mt Gox ever again after this.  It's the equivalent of the NYSE or FTSE being hacked and all shares sold.  If we're to treat BTC seriously we need serious security and service.  This hacking shows just how flaky bitcoin can be and despite the claims of P2P, security, etc, it's almost totally reliant on a few nodes for trading and bitcoin creation.

This incident I believe is being handled well by the site owner/s. At the end of the day it will be 'business as usual' and no-one (including those who seemed to temporarily gain from this scammers actions) will be any the worse off.

I'll be allowing MtGox some more time to harden their security. These things take time. Im sure neither they nor anyone else remotely interested in Bitcoin could have foreseen the growth explosion that was about to occur just a couple of months ago. I also think people expecting MtGox to have been prepared and able to defend against experienced hackers is unreasonable. MtGox knows it unreasonable which I suspect is why put the maximum $1000/day withdrawal limit in place - just in case something like this should happen. But I wont be waiting forever. MtGox needs to act and act fast if traders are to maintain any level of confidence in their site. To not act will result in huge financial loss and others will pick up the ball and do what is required to secure traders against this type of attack. For now I'll let MtGox run with the ball - its their call as to where they and we go from here.