Posting my loss porn to wallstreetbets so I can lose money on Reddit on Reddit

The binance “hack” is looking extremely fishy

Initially they blamed a single devops engineer losing his laptop, this is now acknowledged to not be the case.

But let’s start there.

That means the system is so insecure that a single developer has the ability to just transfer $6 billion of crypto. Because if it’s plausible that their credentials being stolen can do that, this means even the most basic cybersecurity and access control principles are not being employed and in fact they’re just giving root access to devops to simplify operations. Insane.

Oh but that wasn’t actually true.

Now they say “multiple breaches” occurred.

The fact this wasn’t immediately clear, the fact they initially thought “well I guess it was someone stealing a system-wide root access credential”… this means besides the fact that system-wide root access credentials even exist in the first place…

It means they don’t have the observability in place to immediately see if it was in fact those credentials that were used to perform the hack.

So that’s now two basic concepts of cybersecurity obviously not being used despite $20 billion in assets:

1. Root credentials exist and are given to devops.

And

2. They don’t have audit logging in place to see what actions are performed, audit logging which should record “identity X performed Y”.

They also say that the hackers carefully covered their tracks.

Fucking bullshit. They just weren’t recording anything. It’s obvious.

Now another thing.

Why was their instinct to immediately put public blame on this engineer?

Now they put the blame on “North Korean hackers.” What is the evidence for these being North Korean hackers?

It’s actually extremely thin. Basically the “pattern of transfers” to launder the crypto through different exchanges and transfers is being treated as a fingerprint.

Which is also fucking bullshit. Because it would be some kind of algorithmic scramble to try to make the traceability as difficult as possible and to create plausible deniability about the source of funds.

That’s the fingerprint of any crypto scam.

Anyway they say this pattern of transfers is a fingerprint that matches a previous hack that was linked to North Koreans.

So even if you accept the fingerprint claim, the claim this hack is North Koreans entirely rests on the previous hack being North Koreans.

What is the evidence of these previous hack being North Koreans? Fucking zero. The FBI said that was a leading theory at one point, without citing their reasons why or even being conclusive about it.

Now that previous hack… it used Trojans with names like MANYUSCRIPT, Lazarus, other biblical names from the Old Testament. Talmudic names. The first hack really sounds more like it was Israel given their naming conventions.

Now, I think it’s actually pretty weak to claim this is linked to the previous hack anyway. Using AI-driven analysis (yep) to determine a fingerprint of algorithmic crypto cycling is a fucking weak premise to link these two hacks together.

So whatever it’s a red herring imo.

We return to the facts of this case

(1) Management is eager to put the blame at easy targets. The careless devops engineer who was so irresponsible as to have his system wide root access credentials stolen, rather than the leadership team who allow that in the first place when tens of billions are accessible to those credentials.

(2) The absolutely shocking lack of observability in this system to even hold that theory in the first place, when it should have been immediately obvious who was doing what inside the system.

(3) Which means a leadership team who have actively chosen to build a crypto fund with less security and observability than the mini pc I use to stream movies from.

(4) These are active choices. Active choices to make it extremely easy to steal crypto from Binance in an untraceable manner.

(5) And then after the theft, multiple attempts to put the blame and attention onto targets that seem obvious on the surface level and only become implausible when you actually look at what the specifics of the finger pointing claims are.

(6) ….and Binance has been gradually losing markets as they fail to achieve regulatory compliance in multiple jurisdictions around the world.

This, my friends, is looking like a good old-fashioned crypto exchange “accidentally losing your money” rug pull.

It simply is not plausible you’d be running a banking system with $20 billion of assets under management with such insanely extremely poor cybersecurity practices.

System wide root access given to devops to just have on their laptop.

An obvious lack of audit and access logging to even maintain that theory in the first place.

An obvious lack of observability to not realize there were multiple intrusions occurring in multiple systems simultaneously.

This is a designed failure. An intentionally, laughably, ridiculously low level of cybersecurity.

It’s an intentional design choice. It’s an inside job by people with very high levels of authority within the company.

Happy Halloween

which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container

This makes it sound like the only thing standing between me and extreme wealth is oauth2proxy

Declare that the shipping lanes are OPEN, use all caps this is important. If anyone asks any questions say that the only thing blocking the flow of oil is Iran.

Point out that you’ve defeated Iran, completely, to dust. Absolute atoms. Nothing remains except a couple of sheep.

But you need $5 trillion to defeat those sheep.

Nvidia doesn’t even actually make the chips.

It owns the intellectual property and does a lot of engineering, but it doesn’t fabricate.

This is the second most shameful display of perfidy and arrogant deceit by Argentina this year, second only to their cheating loss to Spain in the World Cup.

If he can perform direct action then what’s your excuse?

It’s patently absurd.

How the fuck does it take “dozens” of complaints?

Complaints from peers. Junior doctors who are literally putting their careers on the line to lodge a complaint.

Crazy. If the nurses are saying something seems wrong then something is wrong.

Democracy is when once every 4 years you get to veto one neoliberal camp against another neoliberal camp.

Democracy is spending 15 years debating if a trans teen has a right to self-identity while delegating tax policy to bankers.

We live in a dictatorship.

There’s more ideological diversity within the CCP than there is in the entirety of the west.

He’s under house arrest, and even then only at night and on weekends.

Given these threats from a co-conspirator in his conviction, it would make sense to move him to a safer, more controlled facility.

It’s safe for them to do so and it legitimizes the “rules based order” when powerless dissent is allowed

What’s the opposite of “replacement theory”?

His son lives in Miami. It’s more likely than you think.

It’s the singularly best part about him.

To understand this conflict you first must understand the Hittites. Why did their empire collapse at the end of the Bronze Age while the Egyptians survived? This is key.

It shouldn’t be surprising at all but it still feels so fucked up that even the “left wing” of Israel is racist to the extent of simply refusing to work with Palestinian-Israelis on the basis of being Palestinian.

Like, I know. Of course. And this isn’t new for the “left” in Israel at all. The naqba was perpetrated under the vaguely-socialist Labor Zionism. Zionist leftism is still just the left wing of genocide, Strasserites to the Hitlers of Likud so yeah I know I know.

But to see it actually happen and play out. It makes me feel physically sick.

How can they not see who they are?

High speed train crash in Spain kills at least 30.

Unions have been raising concerns about excessive vibrations and a lack of maintenance on high speed lines.

It’s the second major high speed train crash in Spain this year. 40 died in the first and at least 30 died now.

Climate preparedness plans such as the plan to evacuate Spain

Including Russia in the peace talks?

That’s a red line. Blue maga now.