pull down to refresh

Well, the op-return dialog between the liquid hacker and blockstream got a little more interesting a few blocks ago:

This comes after the hacker stated that all communication would be plaintext yesterday.

1703 sats \ 22 replies \ @optimism 22h

"I'm a whitehat"
"You are going to pay 10%"

lmao

reply

A very self-righteous hacker.

reply
1445 sats \ 8 replies \ @optimism 22h

Where I'm from, the moment you extort, you're a blackhat.

Edit: PS. "From now on everything is in cleartext" is also extortion, so that's 3 counts.

reply

I'm surprised the hacker thinks this is a viable way to proceed.

Steal some funds if that is what you are going to do, but this kind of "negotiation" is clearly never going to lead to some sort of consensual ending. Hacker has an ego?

reply
199 sats \ 6 replies \ @optimism 22h

Concur.

An uncontrollable ego at that. Anyone that uses OP_RETURN for things like this has issues.

reply

Or it is some kind of personal beef.

reply
96 sats \ 4 replies \ @optimism 22h

<they're the same picture meme>

reply

if they think the FBI isn’t watching this convo like a hawk they’re also delusional. the longer it goes on, the more it helps them find them. the FBI would absolutely reject paying the ransom.

they should upload a jpeg in response

reply
239 sats \ 0 replies \ @nichrome 13h

What he meant by "I am a whitehat"

reply
209 sats \ 9 replies \ @ek 22h

I think Blockstream should def pay some percentage, one way or the other. See also #1566044. I guess I’m not a whitehat.

reply
240 sats \ 8 replies \ @optimism 22h

I guess not indeed. They're declining a $1.5M bounty, which would be a top 10 (3?) all-time bounty payout across everything that ever was coded in the history of mankind. 10% makes it the top1 by 3.2x, because currently the biggest bounty ever was $10M for a responsibly disclosed wormhole vuln.

reply
168 sats \ 7 replies \ @ek 22h

As I read it, Blockstream wants everything back and is thus not willing to pay anything. Is that a wrong interpretation of the situation?

reply
121 sats \ 5 replies \ @optimism 21h

Wrong interpretation. You should always put everything back and get the bounty paid with non-stolen funds. The 1.5M is the bounty offered, I'm 99% sure. So "they're not willing to pay anything" is a bad assumption on your part, I think.

reply
33 sats \ 0 replies \ @nichrome 19h

He doesn't want to give everything back hoping to get something in return because he doesn't want to trust, he wants to verify 😅

reply
147 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 21h

The “(maybe even 0)” made it sound like it might not be a bad assumption.

reply
115 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 21h

That refers to them not having received it yet? I wouldn't pay squat to anyone holding 15% of funds hostage either.

As little as 3 months ago my former security list got blackmailed for 500k USDC including ethereum address. And that was one of countless. So I guess I am biased.

reply

The hacker is afraid that they won't pay him the bounty if he releases he remaining coins.

1.5 million for 5 billion assets is kinda 0 in hacker's eyes. Because he isn't sure...maybe the blockstream guys indicated something to him with disrespect.

reply

Hacker must be from India?

100% this is the interpretation

reply

Actually as I can interpret, the hacker is asking that he should be paid 10% of the funds out of thier own money (not from the users funds), he also means if they fulfill this, the users will not lose 15% ...this also means hell refund the remaining.

Probably this proposition is because the whitehat hacker wants clean funds.

reply
1155 sats \ 8 replies \ @optimism 22h

Stop calling it a whitehat. You're not a whitehat if you extort. Whitehats return the funds and get nothing.

reply

there are no whitehats in India

reply
260 sats \ 5 replies \ @justin_shocknet 20h -420 sats

Greyhat seems appropriate here, a blackhat wouldn't have returned anything or made contact.

Still violated security.md though

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 22h -100 sats

deleted by author

103 sats \ 1 reply \ @nichrome 13h

> conversations get decrypted
> em dashes used liberally in the exchanges

Make it happen

reply

i would chuckle

reply

my favorite OP_RETURN message from this debacle

reply
130 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 20h

So it WAS you! I knew it

reply

deleted by author

326 sats \ 3 replies \ @siggy47 23h

Oh, now this is getting fun! 🍿

reply
300 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 22h

Only now? I’ve already gone through like five buckets of popcorn since the start!

reply
103 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 22h

My 100x leveraged long popcorn is very disappointed in your volume.

reply

riiiiiight!

reply
15 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 21h

No signature so anybody could have posted that.

But Blockstream would know if this is where the conversation is at if they've already received the same thing signed and encrypted to them.

reply

It is an op-return included with a transaction moving the stolen funds. Isn't that evidence enough of who sent it? Or am I missing something here?

reply

Does this mean they going to return the outstanding 5%

reply

I don't think so. I don't know if Block stream is going to pony up 10%.

reply

I thought they withheld 15 already. They want more?

reply

The way I read it is that perhaps they have offered to return 5% more (leaving the amount they take at 10%) if Blockstream moves amount equal to 10% to the liquid federation address.

ie the hacker is demanding that Blockstream contribute at least 10% to making the liquid network whole, and the attacker has withheld an extra 5% to try to force them to do this.

Seems like the person has quite a chip on their shoulder regarding Blockstream...

reply
168 sats \ 3 replies \ @siggy47 22h

My guess - a BIP- 110er with anger towards Back.

reply

oh, that'd be fantaaaastic!

True, Luke the holy scammer has been quiet for a while

reply

So maybe they eventually settle for a 200 BTC bounty

reply
144 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 20h -420 sats

Spamming the chain with OP_RETURN? Totally tracks, they're really good at saying one thing while doing another.

I DESERVE PAYMENT FOR MY WORK!!

reply
199 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullcount 21h

I'm rooting for the hacker at this point...

I was so surprised to hear so many bitcoiners this week making endless excuses for Blockstream. “They’re such good people, yada yada…”

Maybe its because I've never interacted with a blocksteam employee (knowingly), but I tend to judge a company based on their work and products alone.

First PeerSwap has a ton of vulns patched, then CLN, now LBTC

Three failures in three separate products is a pattern worth discussing, diagnosing, and destroying the underlying conditions that led to this.

Our legal system does not hold Blockstream accountable, so the "free market" gave us the vigilante we needed.

reply
103 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 23h

What a mess...

reply

Hard to see how this resolves any better than what Liquid already got back.

reply
reply
11 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 15h

Spicy.

reply

I think, yes we all can agree that liquid whitehat is way better than blockstream.

There's definitely lot on the conversation that will particularly rug the whatever repo blockstream and Adam are left after the incident.

reply
202 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 20h -420 sats

I read this plain text as now holding the conversation key ransom.

I wonder to what extent Blockstream thought they were having an encrypted conversation, and are now realizing that everyone might read what they wrote to this group.

It's possible those contents make this look much much worse, might not just be the death of Liquid but Blockstream itself as it's currently structured.