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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 20 2017, @11:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the oops dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

A vulnerability in Parity's Ethereum wallet software has been exploited by thieves to rob victims on a massive scale.

A few hours ago, Parity told its users to move their ETH holdings from their in-browser wallets to more secure accounts immediately:

The warning came after three transactions appeared on Etherscan.io, in which accounts were drained of 150,000 coins worth just over US$30 million at the current price. It's understood a trivial programming blunder in Parity's code allowed crooks to hijack strangers' wallets at will.

Coindesk reports 377,000 more Ether were at risk of theft, but were drained into holding accounts by white hats. That gallant action was outlined by Kurt Knudsen on Parity's Gitter channel:

The White Hat Group were made aware of a vulnerability in a specific version of a commonly used multisig contract. This vulnerability was trivial to execute, so they took the necessary action to drain every vulnerable multisig they could find as quickly as possible. Thank you to the greater Ethereum Community that helped finding these vulnerable contracts. The White Hat account currently holding the rescued funds is [here].

Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/20/us30_million_below_parity_ethereum_bug_leads_to_big_coin_heist/


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  • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday July 20 2017, @06:38PM

    by JNCF (4317) on Thursday July 20 2017, @06:38PM (#542019) Journal

    Note that there is still a blockchain in which the original contract was respected, and that the value of the currency on that blockchain happens to be significantly higher today than it was before the fork. I'm not even convinced that hard-forks are unhealthy, though they do raise questions. The precedent set by a community rolling back transactions certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

    I do get your point. It took us a long time to transition from metal to paper, and some people still haven't. Moving from paper to information won't be easy. I'm really excited by what is happening with blockchains, but I don't think we're ready for mass adoption yet.

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