$250k Stolen From Bitcoin Exchange Bitfloor

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It's sad that the only Bitcoin news we've heard in a long time has to be this. :(

Last night, a few of our servers were compromised. As a result, the attacker gained accesses to an unencrypted backup of the wallet keys (the actual keys live in an encrypted area). Using these keys they were able to transfer the coins. This attack took the vast majority of the coins BitFloor was holding on hand. As a result, I have paused all exchange operations. Even tho only a small majority of the coins are ever in use at any time, I felt it inappropriate to continue operating not having the capability to cover all account balances for BTC at the time.
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Wow, that sucks. Makes you wonder who was behind this. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Fed or some other large financial institution.
 
Where there is money, there are sharks & scavengers.

The more popular bitcoins get, the more of these there will be.

This could bee seen as bad press, but also an indicator as to how well bitcoin is doing.
 
Youn said:
Wow, that sucks. Makes you wonder who was behind this. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Fed or some other large financial institution.
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Probably space aliens from the planet M'goplibornak. It's about as plausible as your idea.
 
Stupid Question Of The Day: Can't they just do a rollback and reverse the transaction?
 
Steve said:
It's sad that the only Bitcoin news we've heard in a long time has to be this.

Quote:

Last night, a few of our servers were compromised. As a result, the attacker gained accesses to an unencrypted backup of the wallet keys (the actual keys live in an encrypted area). Using these keys they were able to transfer the coins. This attack took the vast majority of the coins BitFloor was holding on hand. As a result, I have paused all exchange operations. Even tho only a small majority of the coins are ever in use at any time, I felt it inappropriate to continue operating not having the capability to cover all account balances for BTC at the time.
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DigitalGriffin said:
Stupid Question Of The Day: Can't they just do a rollback and reverse the transaction?
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No because with the wallet encryption keys it would be like if they took the cash out of your wallet. You know how much was there but there is no way to get it back. Bit-Coins in a wallet should be looked at like "cash in a wallet" not "credit cards in a wallet" ie there is no way to do charge reversal like you can with a credit card. Once its gone, its gone.
 
Insider work? Who sits at their desk thinking "hmm they must have unencrypted backups of the wallet keys. I'm making this hacking script to nab them all"?

Unless the thief managed to break into the server proper and poked around until he saw it. If that's the case, unencrypted backup is just one of their problems. They need to secure access to the server as well.
 
The exchange op blew it bigtime, hosted the site at linode, same outfit that hosted the bitcoinica hack, then left an unencrypted wallet.dat backup after some manual maintenance. He claims the actual box was "not public facing" but had ports open to the public servers
 
Pretty stupid for someone who is supposed to know what they are doing. Wonder how this will affect prices.
 
Steve said:
It's sad that the only Bitcoin news we've heard in a long time has to be this. :(
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How do you figure?

Just last week there was a story here about scammer stealing a ton of bitcoins that people "invested" with him and a couple weeks before that was one about some Bitcoinica being sued for not providing enough security which resulted in multiple hacks which hurt the value of bitcoins.

Seems to me that there's been lots of news about it in the past month, it's just that all of it's been bad.
 
Kritter said:
Why isn't there a coin blacklist?
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While this interesting, and even though it would not be easy to implement, the bigger question is who would maintain it? Having a central authority would defeat many advantages of BitCoin.
 
pankkake said:
While this interesting, and even though it would not be easy to implement, the bigger question is who would maintain it? Having a central authority would defeat many advantages of BitCoin.
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It doesn't need to be built into bitcoin, just a service that provides a list of potentially
tolen coins. Exchanges could optionally incorporate this feature to deter thieves from using stolen coins.
 
Kritter said:
It doesn't need to be built into bitcoin, just a service that provides a list of potentially
tolen coins. Exchanges could optionally incorporate this feature to deter thieves from using stolen coins.
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The hash tags used for security are generated by the owner each time the coins are passed along. No one else is supposed to know them by design. Having an unencrypted backup of 'wallets' though...? :eek:
 
I can understand people noit wanting to have something run by goverment people, but then they do another system run by people, and are shocked when people are people. :D

This seems weird, why were the "backup" keys unencrypted? Thats like having a 6" thick door with a time release lock on one side of the bank vault, and saloon doors on the other.
 
DeathPrincess said:
but then they do another system run by people, and are shocked when people are people.
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Who's shocked? We all make mistakes. I think the biggest mistake to come from this is discontinuing the bitcoin concept altogether.
 
Youn said:
Who's shocked? We all make mistakes. I think the biggest mistake to come from this is discontinuing the bitcoin concept altogether.
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Actually, on the contrary I think that would be the most valuable lesson to take from this.
 
How much bitcoin value was stolen to make $250K, just asking as I have never looked into the bitcoin currency or even know you could actually turn it into real money/gift cards (which kind of has me interested in making some virtual money)?
 
Outamyhead said:
How much bitcoin value was stolen to make $250K, just asking as I have never looked into the bitcoin currency or even know you could actually turn it into real money/gift cards (which kind of has me interested in making some virtual money)?
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at the time of the hack it was about $10 per BTC
 
Good grief, and I thought I was swindling the states on the pound sterling to dollar ratio, whenever I visited before making the move.
 
Youn said:
Who's shocked? We all make mistakes. I think the biggest mistake to come from this is discontinuing the bitcoin concept altogether.
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Yeah, definitely. Don't discredit bitcoin because of this.

Discredit it because this is far from the first time something like this has happened.

Discredit it because the currency value itself is about as stable as a heroin addict that hasn't gotten their fix in a week.

Discredit it because the currency's main use is black market purchases.
 
right on!

also, I don't think this "internet" thing is going to last
 
Daggah said:
Discredit it because the currency value itself is about as stable as a heroin addict that hasn't gotten their fix in a week.
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No such thing. A heroin who hadn't gotten a fix in a week would be dead.
 
Daggah said:
Discredit it because this is far from the first time something like this has happened.
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It only discredits giving your money to any service blindly, and storing stuff "in the cloud".

Discredit it because the currency value itself is about as stable as a heroin addict that hasn't gotten their fix in a week.
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There were some crazy weeks, but it's overall pretty good.
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#igWeeklyztgOzm1g10zm2g25

Discredit it because the currency's main use is black market purchases.
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Sounds like a selling point.
 
Daggah said:
Discredit it because this is far from the first time something like this has happened.
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Last week a bank was robbed, the dollar must be on it's way out, better start buying up gold! ;)


Daggah said:
Discredit it because the currency value itself is about as stable as a heroin addict that hasn't gotten their fix in a week.
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I'll give you that. It's exchange value does fluctuate a lot.


Daggah said:
Discredit it because the currency's main use is black market purchases.
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That would make it more "popular". It doesn't matter if you like it or not, but the black market for goods won't ever go away. A currency that enables more anonymous transactions is highly desired for that type of thing. For a currency to be useful it needs to change hands, and this type of activity is perfectly suited for bitcoin style currencies (even if bitcoin itself fails, the idea of a anonymous currency not controlled by a govt. is highly desired).
 
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