Frustratingly vague for a Slashdot write-up.
“These brothers allegedly committed a first-of-its-kind manipulation of the Ethereum blockchain by fraudulently gaining access to pending transactions, altering the movement of the electronic currency, and ultimately stealing $25 million in cryptocurrency from their victims,” said Special Agent in Charge Thomas Fattorusso of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) New York Field Office.
Good to know the prosecutors have an understanding of what they’re prosecuting… Not even a single mention of MEV in the DoJ press release.
survirtual@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So they discovered faulty code and made some money?
Can anyone explain to me how this is illegal?
The code is a contract. If someone writes bad code and loses money, then write better code - just like if someone writes a bad legal contract and loses money.
The justice system is awful.
shrugal@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Bad/Unfavorable contracts and literal deception/fraud are two different things, at least in the legal system. Not everything that’s technically possible is also allowed, obviously.
Compare it to using a security flaw to hack into a system. Technically you’re only using the official API, maybe in unusual ways but still. But you’re doing it in bad faith and causing harm, and that can make a difference.
survirtual@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Hacking a private corporate system, which is generally on closed nets and requires an internal actor / phishing, is significantly different from exploiting a code fault on a public network.
Trustless systems rely on mathematics to secure their networks. This is both the revolution of them and the risk. If you build a system of value and it is on a public network, and you fail to properly secure it, that is supposed to be the risk. You lose money, hopefully go bankrupt / lose credibility, and a more efficient actor eats your lunch.
Treating it like a traditional system with these unspoken legal safeguards when it uses a public blockchain and public network is absurd.
shrugal@lemm.ee 5 months ago
What’s absurd is this crypto maximalist take.
You can’t just make up your own permission and punishment system, and then expect the legal system to just step aside and let it handle all disputes, especially when it comes to fraud. That’s like founding your own city in an existing country, and declaring all existing law obsolete. I know some people think this is a real possibility, but the real world doesn’t work like that.
blargerer@kbin.social 5 months ago
This is like saying they discovered how to pick a lock so deserve everything in whats locked by it.
survirtual@lemmy.world 5 months ago
No.
It is more like finding a gold mine on public BLM land. It is over treacherous mountains only experienced climbers can access. There are no signs or doors saying it is licensed to anyone; indeed, it isn’t officially registered with BLM. So the climbers go in and take as many gold nuggets as they can carry.
Unbeknownst to them, it was a mine discovered by rich and connected people who have cronies in BLM. Rangers go and arrest the climbers and say that you aren’t allowed to climb, climbing is illegal, and taking gold from that mine is illegal because someone else found it and dug it, even though they didn’t properly secure it nor did they put up any signs. They assumed the mountain was enough protection.
This is closer to the situation.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Imagine believing that regular people have any rights whatsoever to “public” land.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
The didn’t pick the lock, they created bunch of fake exchanges.
yetAnotherUser@feddit.de 5 months ago
You withdraw cash at an ATM but the software has faulty code which causes your balance to remain the same after withdrawing any amount.
You notice this and then empty the entire ATM this way, making $200,000. I’m sure once you explain to the jury that the ATM just gave you a bad contract, they will acquit you.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 5 months ago
No one ever said ATM-code is law. Ethereum code is supposed to be. Code is law is one of their slogans.
Everything that a blockchain does could be handled by a single office computer. The whole reason for the huge, expensive over-head is to put crypto beyond the law. Stuff like this exposes the whole, huge waste of human effort.
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Code is the law of the blockchain, his transaction wasn’t reverted, he got caught irl. It’s like saying constitution isn’t law because laws of physics don’t prevent murder.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
It isn’t above law.
Cypher@lemmy.world 5 months ago
A bartender in Australia did essentially just that but to the tune of $1.6 million AUD.
businessinsider.com/australian-bartender-withdraw…
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
They created a bunch of fake shell companies in foreign companies and were preparing to flee the US
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 months ago
Doesn’t sound a huge deal different to High Frequency Trading, and Wall Street nobheads fall over themselves to exploit that.
pedroapero@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Sounds to me that the difference is they exploited a bug to get private information in order to game the bots.