Batchoverflow panic. How one bug can disrupt world economy in the future
In recent days two major exchanges Huobi and OKEX suspended deposits and withdrawalas of all ERC-20 coins. It is caused by bug called "BatchOverFlow" which is simple known for ages. It affected only one token(SmartMesh) which was using batchTransfer function. batchTransfer function is not included in the ERC-20 standard so if your contract code follows the standard it is safe.
Blockchain is cool technology but in that situation it is more like a hampering jail chain which stops everything and does not let to make any move. How is it possible that one simple error in only ONE not very known smart contract code pushed two exchanges to suspend trading.
Is blockchain great?
Yes it is if it is used with caution. Think for the moment if in the future 10% of the economy and business processes will be happening on the blockchain we will not be able to aford such a mistake. One bug may cause whole world to stop. And everyone knows there is no bug free software. Programming is the imperfect art, bugs in the blockchain are very expensive and there is no simple way how to handle with them.
Given that we still have critical bugs creep up in core internet services regularly, I'm surprised this kind of thing doesn't come up more in crypto.
This is why standards matter kids. I'm hoping Zeppelin_OS goes a long way to help standardize dApp development/maintenance workflows a bit but until then we're still in the wild west.
I think that in most cases attackers try to stay undercover and they exploit bugs in less obvious ways
Always trust less than You wanted
I received also a message on Poloniex about this situation. It seems nothing is perfect. Even blockchain. Caution is the key after all.
always trust less than you wanted.
These bugs can be terrible in future when mots of the money will be in blockchains...
Nice Post