Webroot's Response to Ethereum Hack

  • 8 November 2017
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A resolution has yet to be found for yesterday's Parity hack which saw up to $300M worth of Ethereum essentially frozen across the platform. We talked with @, Senior Threat Research Analyst, about the importance of cybersecurity for crypto wallets. 
 

 
Tyler had this to say:
 
"In fixing its bug from July that allowed an attacker to steal $32 Million, Parity created another incredibly destructive situation, locking over $300 Million worth of Ethereum, possibly losing it forever. 
 
This bug was accidentally triggered by user "devops199" on ParityTech Githubs forum (Nov. 6th 2017), who had no intention of stealing but was trying to show yet another major bug that would expose Parity to cyberciminals. In trying to give back the ownership of the wallet library, the user killed the contract and subsequently "suicided" the library code. This means that no funds can be moved out of the multi-sig wallets containing, freezing $300 million worth of Ethereum.
 
As it currently stands, the only way owners can get back the lost Ethereum is dependent on the Ethereum Development team committing to a risky ‘hard fork’ and redistribution, which could damage the reputation of the currency. The last time Ethereum hard forked to fix stolen tokens was the DAO hack which Vitalik has stated was strictly a one-off event. However, considering that this loss is only about 1% of the entire Market Cap of Ethereum and this loss was not the result of any bugs or issues with the Ethereum currency or blockchain itself, it’s unclear that Ethereum will act." 
 
For more information on cryptocurriences, be sure to check out Tyler's previous posts on the subject here.

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