Bitcoin Forum

The most devastating Bitcoin bug in history was the 92 billion Bitcoin that was created from out of thin air. This hack was as a result of security flaw that was found and exploited by the anonymous hacker. Going by todays Bitcoin price the hacker should have been swimming with trillions of $dollars and the wealthiest person on earth. This hack was made possible because of a number overflow error. This hack caused pandemonium among Bitcoin community and thanks to Bitcoin enthusiasts who were able to arrest the case without a major damage to Bitcoin.
The hacked 92 billion Bitcoin transactions were all cancelled and the Blockchain was roll back to its pre-hack state.  source  (https://blocksdecoded.com/cryptocurrency-hacks/)

The question is, assume this hack went through and transactions successful, will Bitcoin still remain the same as it is now? Considering the fact that, there are only 21million Bitcoin programed to be in circulation.
  
Below threads depict the zeal’s among Bitcoin community in the recovery of this incident; can’t the same community help in recovery funds whenever there’s major hack in the network?.

 Strange block 74638  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822.0)
 overflow bug SERIOUS  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=823.0)
 Version 0.3.10 - block 74638 overflow PATCH!  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=827.0)

If this hack would have been a success the existence of Bitcoin would have been dangered. I do not think Bitcoin would have ever reached the present price level and people would have never knew about it.

Not sure "deadliest" is the right way to call this, lol. It's more like one of the very few unsuccessfully exploited flaws at the time.

If the exploit hadn't been discovered or something like that, it's highly possible that a fork would have taken place with the fixed bug. In my opinion, that flaw actually helped Bitcoin in a way: it showed us all that Bitcoin's strength only improves over time.

This was actually an exploitation of a security flaw in the Bitcoin network and the fact is that something like this is completely correctable and therefore did not pose any serious danger in the long run. The weakest link when it comes to hacks are crypto exchanges, and what happened to the Japanese Mt.Gox has so far been the biggest hack weighing a total of about 850 000 BTC - and given that the whole thing has not been resolved even after so many years, it definitely shows us how much that case has hurt Bitcoin.

If Mt.Gox hadn’t happened, where do you think BTC would be today?

Mt. Gox help the bitcoin community grow bigger. Exchanges become better in their security. Laws become stricter. I see Mt. Gox does it role very good for bitcoin. I am sorry for any people who lost money on Mt. Gox

Hacked Exchanges since 2011 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5090869.0). There are many exchanges that were hacked since 2011.

My first question is... Why 92M?

The hacker didn't play it smart, it makes it just to prove there was a flaw and not with the intention of making money, because another way he could manage a low profile creating coins 1 by 1, that way will be harder for the users to realize there was a bug.

Thanks to Satoshi for fixing this issue ^_^

There's a "bug" with ERC-20 explorers where they don't log non-standard events. This means a token could have a total supply of 1 billion, but the creators can mint unlimited tokens using non-standard ERC-20 events and most Ether explorers won't pick this up (Etherscan being one). So if someone found a similar bug with Bitcoin, they could in theory mint tokens that don't show up in the total supply that explorers/users see. I don't know much about the 92M bitcoins created, so it may be unrelated to what I mentioned above.

If this hack was successful, Bitcoin would take a huge hit and I think it would be too hard to recover itself. We are talking about 92 billions of BTC. It is way too much than the number of Bitcoin already exists. I hope Bitcoin's security system can continue to be stronger every year.

Things would have fall apart sincerely speaking and Bitcoin name send to mud.
+why the community find this difficult to implement rollback into Bitcoin network?. Cryptocurrencies exchange has been on the news about hacks and nothing has been done to ensure there are mechanism which can allow rollback if there are incidents of such(stolen funds recover from hackers). I think this should be an important aspect the community of Bitcoin Network and exchanges should look into for solution.

They also help in slowing down global adoption becasue the news of their hacked exchnage went viral. The team wanted rapid spread of Bitcoin without having the capability to secure investors funds, remember Jed McCaleb gave 88% to french engineers and kept just 12% to himself. Having the control of over 70% Bitcoin trades as at that time was a good one, but there was a huge loss to the community after the hack. This has affected the rapid spread of Bitcoin, hope they pay back the stolen funds.

Nobody died from this event, that word is unnecessary.

The important thing is it was found and fixed early, and we have been doing fine. Bitcoin has matured.

I read about the flaw and a possibility of getting BTC out of thin air (maybe there were bugs allowing it even on multiple occasions), but since it was fixed, those newly created bitcoins did not get recognized and this the hackers got nothing out of it, I believe. So I would not say it's the deadliest hack. It's more like 'the most dangerous thing that almost happened with Bitcoin'. And if this wasn't discovered and fixed in time, I'm sure Bitcoin would be done. As for the hacks of exchanges, they can have a negative effect on Bitcoin's reputation and lead to some people panic selling their coins, but then Bitcoin recovers and it's fine.

this was not a hack but a "bug" and you are blowing it out of proportion.

bitcoin would have no reason to exist anymore if we had a "rollback mechanism for stolen funds". it loses one of its main principles which is immutability. and next thing you know every idiot who sells his bitcoin and receives fiat would start claiming hacked and demand roll back. on a larger scale the exchanges do the same by putting the bitcoin in another "pocket" and claim being hacked and demand rollback.

It's more of a exploit during it's early days, and if you are going to look here, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures), there's a lot of vulnerabilities being found and fix. And again, there is a recent one here, Researcher kept a major Bitcoin bug secret for two years to prevent attacks (https://www.zdnet.com/article/researcher-kept-a-major-bitcoin-bug-secret-for-two-years-to-prevent-attacks/).

But still, we are not affected by any of this, anyhow, if there is a successful exploit there could really be some repercussions, but I doubt that it will impact the market for long term.

The hacked amount was undoubtedly  a large amount.If the hackers didn't get caught then the bitcoin can't stand at the royal place of crypto currency.This is appreciated  the hackers were arrested by the cops and the problem was fixed.

I couldn't agree with your opinion, because even though you think something good came out of it (maybe even it did), there are still so many BTCs that have been stolen from legitimate owners, most of whom have never touched BTC again. Most of them not only left the crypto world forever, but they spread the bad word about BTC that is still very clearly heard today. The security of crypto exchanges has certainly increased, but the price was still too high - I still wish it hadn't happened.

But did people learn anything from it? Well, they are not exactly if only Coinbase has, as they say, about 1 million BTC in its possession ...

Believe me. The deadliest hack in crypto history is yet to come.

I definitely can't argue this; due to thousand of cryptocurrency exchanges in the industry without proper security measures put in place. We have heard about series of hacks and the recent is that of Italian Altsbit cryptocurrency which was hacked and part of the funds where recovered back. The issue here is security flaws within these exchanges, those with less security flaws will stay protected but those with the aim of getting investors to forget security as the first priority may end-up be dealt with.

I totally disagree with the topic name. Nothing terrible and irreparable happened, on the contrary, it was a test of strength and the bitcoin team passed it successfully. Such occasions give an incentive to work better and take better care of safety.

It's an overflow bug. The "hacker" (exploiter is more appropriate) didn't choose 92 millions, it's because 92 millions or more precisely 9223372036854775807 (the biggest value possible of a 64 bit integer) so the variable that holds the number of coins of the transactions got overflowed into negative 9223372036854775807, satoshi fixed it easily by checking the value is not negative before validating the transaction using this statement look here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=823.msg9530#msg9530) for details

Perhaps most of this money went to charity. Many hackers use the image of Robin hood when they steal money from the wallet of rich people and distribute it to the poor. For example, African countries largely live thanks to hackers who distribute money to charitable organizations.

This can be said to be really devastating and it goes a long to prove that the blockchain network is not infallible as it's being portrayed since the beginning of time but now a flaw has been identified. It was blocked now but what happens if the attack becomes so consistent that it can not be wandered off and that would be so devastating to the entire crypto industry which could bring an end to further development that could happen on the blockchain platform

It wasn't a hack but a potential bug found in Bitcoin network, after the community discovered this flaw it was quickly patched and the hackers went home with nothing. Hackers  aren't giving anything to charitable from my understanding but always tried to covered up their shitss by doing so. The 95 Billion Bitcoin generated from tin air was recovered from the hackers.

We really can't say that we have unshakeable network because it is only a matter of time, when someone can penetrate again the system. But we still have white hackers or good developers that can counter-attack these malicious activities. They won't let our network die because of these people. But we need to prepare for the worst, right?