Why we should feel empathy towards BitFinex team
I am the owner and co-developer of a medium-sized online bitcoin exchange service. And a huge bitcoin fanatic.
Last week some logs popped out in our back end. Showing many unexplained transactions out of our bitcoin wallet. The feeling at this moment is sickening.
Fortunately, I quickly remembered to check the transactions in a blockchain explorer and saw that they were 2 years old (which possibility in itself is a great feature of crypto currencies, btw).
So, I can only imagine the feelings of the people at Bitfinex when their suspicions for being hacked turned out to be true the other day. The utter despair of total hopelessness that has taken hold of them. That's a lot of pain. Therefore, as much as I am mad at them for letting it happen, I well realize that we are all together in this insanely crazy world of crypto currencies.
I only wonder about the role of the hackers... Are they the necessary evil, witout which nothing good and robust can be created? But I also pray for them too - if they are necessary, then I feel with all them for having this role to play in this damned world of ours.
Keep up the great work @stamen123
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As human as we try to be and feel empathy for them we also need to be fair and say they did a lousy job security wise. We could even go as far as to say they didn't care that much about security that they left it unpatched and in the end allowed for this to happen, making a mockery of their clients and affecting the entire bitcoin community.
I saw some discussions that the main cahuna has disappeared for fear of safety. What would you have done if those two year old transactions would have been from yesterday? Play that in your head, make a backup plan, decide on the actions, and then ask yourself: Why we should feel empathy towards stamen123
Of course they did a lousy job but I would not go that far to imply that they dont care too much about secirity. BItcoin is not where it should be yet though, and I hope that we will find a solution like this one soon:
http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/08/03/how-bitfinex-heist-could-have-been-avoided/
Not an expert so if I get proven wrong, I'l definitely accept it, but I've read a couple places that security issues were known and not action-ed upon. So it was either above their heads or they didn't care.
I also hope things will be resolved, a solution is found and applied and everything goes back to normal. This issue has rippled across multiple coins and it's not good.