Bitcoin Forum

Why no one can track down the hackers who stole around $500million worth of NEM from japanese exchange. how do you keep your cryptocurrency?

Exchange broken has nothing to do with cryptocurrency safety. It is the same as asking how gold is safe after a bang has been robbed. It is better to keep your cryptocurrency in hard wallet or on distributed exchange, probably.

Think you are somewhat mistaken. The NEM balances are definitely being monitored and there are even some suggestions that they have already started making their moves, though seemingly to random addresses and not sold on exchanges, from sources such as these:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-cryptocurrency-cybercrime/exclusive-coincheck-hackers-trying-to-move-stolen-cryptocurrency-executive-idUSKBN1FJ28Y

Elliptic, which was engaged to track them down, is probably going to trigger the net and report AFTER these guys are caught.

OP might be refering to this kind of news:

Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/nem-foundation-stops-tracking-coins-stolen-coincheck/ (https://news.bitcoin.com/nem-foundation-stops-tracking-coins-stolen-coincheck/)


Whether these are real news or faked (maybe to trap the thieves)? I don't know.
But quite some sites were posting stuff about NEM foundation stopping to track the coins. Without any explanation (except for:  information have been given to law-enforcement agencies).

Crypto currencies are safe. As a example when we consider bitcoin, they use block chain technology. In block chain there is a interaction between wallet  to wallet and they make a chain. Day by day block achain is become larger. If anyone wants to hack block chain they have to hack all wallet in the world. There is no one could do it.

Cryptocurrency is safe until you share your secret key someone or keep your cryptocurrency on centralized exchange. Because of hacking attack Binance recently announce decentralized blockchain of binance.

“Beginning March 18, the NEM.io Foundation has disabled the tracking mosaic that was put into place to monitor XEM movements from the Coincheck theft. This effort was effective at reducing the hacker’s ability to liquidate stolen XEM and provided law enforcement with actionable information. We don’t plan to release further details due to the sensitive nature of this investigation.”

Quote from : https://www.ccn.com/nem-foundation-calls-off-chase-for-stolen-coins-from-530-million-coincheck-hack/

" South Korean intelligence officials have reportedly identified parallels between the attack’s methodology and hacks attributed to North Korea’s government, but no perpetrator has been formally accused by law enforcement."

https://www.ccn.com/north-korea-stole-billions-won-cryptocurrency-says-south-korea/

It goes to a next level when governments gets involved and this will explain why they are saying that it is a sensitive subject.

If you asked me, I would say that it was a inside job, but that is just my own opinion.  ::)

Mate, my explanation goes like this, if a new developed crypto is created the choice of the founder or creator depends on Him if He would like to reveal His Identity for less security of how much he own of His own crypto, my point is, nem is knowledgeably made by a group of developers and the safetiness depends on who Holds or own it, Hackers will not attack a specific area specifically NEM of they don't have the ability to do it and the availability of transparency of the owner of the NEM.

simple explanation, crypto currency is safe, the idea of losing it because it was stole by somebody is the idea of unsafetiness because there are hackers, who keeps on lurin around making ways to initiate the thing they want to get. the problem is, Hackers are very smart, if they are untraceable it means that things happen in incognito mode.
(Leaving with no History)

You wanna keep the crypto safe, It only some way:
1. Hold on COLD Wallet: Trezo, Ledger, etc: A place you hold coin is a most safety
You can find some information at a website: https://trezor.io/    or   https://www.ledgerwallet.com

2. Hold one "PAPER WALLET". You can find on this internet with key "Paper wallet"

3. Hold on DECENTRALIZE EXCHANGE- a exanger never hacked
 

Cryptocurrency is safe, AFAIK there's no single cryptocurrency was hacked. Hacking/stealing only happens when an idiot/unsecured user/wallet owner/exchanges/wallets let that happen, a loophole/bug from their software caused the hack, not from any cryptocurrency. And about the NEM hacked, read this article about 5 days ago "Coincheck: NEM Foundation Stops Tracing Stolen Coins, Hackers’ Account At Zero (https://cointelegraph.com/news/coincheck-nem-foundation-stops-tracing-stolen-coins-hackers-account-at-zero)"

Guys the point of the OP is  how safe is cryptocurrency, not how safe is an exchange platform,  X or Y

@OP
A Cryptocurrency is safe as the math are safe. it's secured by math;  based on an algebraic structure of elliptic curves and digital signature a mathematical scheme

And same as @bL4nkcode I have ner hear of any so far

I think you're approaching how much the exchanges are safe, not cryptocurrency. Exchanges are unsafe. Do not trust them. Hacker cases are constant and always in high values. And recovering what is lost in them via legal justice is very difficult.

Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, and especially Blockchain, are so far proven to be safe until the discovery of failures.

And failures can occur. That's why we treat it as an experiment yet. In Bitcoin serious crashes are rare and if I'm not mistaken, only once did they have to pause and recover the backup. 9 years with just one pause is incredible.

You see every time people speak on those issues they fail to consider the fact anything can be stolen. Burgler can take your computer by breaking into your house, your traditional cash money can be taken from you, your car can be hijacked. The whole ownership concept presumes that your thing can cease being yours at some point (it can be done with or without your consent). Id doe not matter if it is truckload of gold or virtual coin. If value is transferable - it can be transferred, no matter of its quantity. So it all boils down to how do you make the effort of stealing  cost more then what the thing being stolen. For example effective defence would be to hide 10$ behind 5$ lock that require 1000$ tool to break it. I.e. thief need to invest times more to steal times less.

Another fundamental rule is that anything can be taken off of you provided enough efforts were invested. So if I have infinite resources I can theoretically take appart any lock atom by atom - it just not very practical.

Cryptocurrency is interesting in that context because with current technological progress there is no way to BREAK your key. So the only weakness is your own head. So "ownership" of coins and safety is your sole responsibility. Basically you get the perfect lock, but you need to design the door yourself. If your door have a hole - your lock won't save you.

I'll summarize it like this:

Imagine there is a glass box nobody can break into without entering password. Inside of this box there is a super-valuable coin that worth a fortune. Anyone can have the box, look inside this box and make sure coin is there but nobody can ever take it unless they know the password. This box is super safe unless you give the password to it to someone else. 

There is a phrase like that
"Impossible is nothing. It just takes time"
 
Take Your Own Precaution (TYOP) and leave it to time.

Speaking in the context of Bitcoin, no one would compensate you if you were to get robbed of your cash on the streets either. Just like Bitcoin, you control your own cash and not your banks.

With the agreement, I'm certain some sort of contract could be made using other blockchain technology and it could uphold in the code of law. Bitcoin is primarily for day to day transactions and not for things that would require trust beyond that transaction.

Nothing in this world is 100% safe, to understand how cryptocurrency is safe you need to how blockchains works, even when people get stolen the coins can be somewhat tracked. But it's surely safe enough to be used, banks get stolen all the time as well, even the army.  ::)

And, even if they somehow fall victim to exploit, you can be sure as a majority user, you'll get some protections. Refer to Bitcoin exploit of 2010 where billions of coins were created. Refer to Ethereum which was created after a major exploit in the original chain.

Exploits aside, yeah. Cryptocurrency is probably the safest bet for money right now, and will be for a good many years, probably enough for our lifetimes. People say things like quantum computing but really, blockchain tech will do more than stay ahead of that curve.

P.S. Why're all the news outlets saying the NEM was successful "laundered"? I thought successful laundering implies the funds have been successfully cleaned.

You cannot compare cryptocurrencies with exchanges. Both have entirely different system of working. Cryptocurrencies can never be hacked, unless an idiot or a careless wallet owner let that happen due his own foolishness. Cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology. Every day new blocks are being added to the blockchain. So if anyone who wants to hack it, he will have to hack all the wallets on the blockchain network which is impossible to do.

And how you will be able to find for the person or group of people which differs in nothing from you?
For example you have stolen 500 million, all purses identical and I can trace only that where you have sent money, further you will send money on 10-20 of purses and from there through the exchanges you will do small cashing in of means, any exchange of the average level doesn't ask KYC that I could find you, and often where there is KYC people give the false data bought on the black Internet and everything, the track is lost

Nothing is ever safe on this world and that includes cryptocurrency. There will always be loopholes where evil minded persons make use of them in order to benefit themselves. It's all the people behind shadows who are making cryptocurrency unsafe. So one has to be smart and cautious all the time in each step of the way as there are plenty out there who want to get/acquire what you have and possess by any means.

My best policy to not too store everything in one wallet.try to spread your coins on different wallets. Try not to open your account everyday unless until it is required. Use 2FA to your mobile and use high tech paid securities to yoir wallet.
Just these things are required.

Who says the cryPTO currencies are safe. They were never safe, no right now and also not in future .These are not meant to be safe. If they ARD safe than the richest people will become more richer and the poor will always in terms of investment. Just keep in mind tge cryptocurrency is the most dynamic thing which is the best part of it.

That's absolutely right, we cannot compare cryptocurrencies and exchanges. As you said, cryptocurrencies can't be hacked, as it's not a thing that can be hacked, it uses the block chain technology, which it's impossible for anyone to hack it, but there are some people who are already hacked, because of their stupidity, they are not using carefully their wallets.

it is my big concern as a newbie in the industry. please advice " is there any specific way to guide using the wallets safely?"

Inside job is the word. Every single time.

Choose any "how is cryptocurrency --fill in the blank--" and the world will answer with a million different answers.  But why?  In my opinion, it is because crypotcurrency is still relatively new and not fully adopted as being a normal part of commerce.  Sure, 8 years may sound like a long time to some.  But how long have credit cards been around?  How long have people been actually comfortable using them?  Sure, people feel safer today using them even though every year this is massive fraud.

The same can be said for cryptocurrency, cash, or any other fiat.  A big problem with cryptocurrency is people don't fully respect the security risks and do not adequately secure assets.  Mt Gox didn't teach people and neither did the XEM heist.  It will continue to happen but we should all be thankful that the recent crimes haven't been as devastating as the Mt Gox even though they have been bigger and more widespread.

I think it's not fully safe, however, the protection it will have comes from large redundancy. The blockchain stores it’s “ledger” on many thousands of servers, and if, let’s say, one ledger will happen to become altered and say a group action ne'er happened, you continue to have 999,999 different ledgers that do say the group action materialized. I might suggest that if you get into commerce giant amounts of crypto-currency, you buy a “wallet”, that is essentially AN encrypted USB drive that you just will store your currency on. With this, your currency is abundant safer than being held on website servers, that area unit far more liable to attack.

NEM is hacked because the company was not stored offline, they were breaking the rule which you have to keep offline to generate more coin. So I think for this matter we better to blame on the operator, the company

For one, be extra careful when investing in projects and companies through ICOs. Secondly, you can protect your digital assets by keeping them in cold storage such as  paper wallet, hardware wallet, data storage device inaccessible to anyone except you (e.g. USB, disk drive) etc. All of these options have their pros and cons, but keeping most of your assets in them is safer than keeping them in software wallets, hosted wallets, or wallets tied with accounts of online exchanges.

If the bankrupt has been done by the any bank you will loose all the money you have added in your savings account as well but bitcoin saved means that will be remain same in all the places buddy. It go down in sometime but that will not remain same for years of time but bitcoin will grow as the market volume of the bitcoin increases.

If you have banks it will not be controlled by you alone. So you will find the bitcoin keep safer in the desktop, hardware, vaults and paper wallets. This is only can be controlled by no one can touch your wallet unless you have shared or lost the private key and wallet.dat file.

Thats not the question you should be asking.. It is you that protects his investment and all depends mostly on you. Use 2FA pick passwords longer then 10 digits and dont leave all of your coins in unsafe exchanges and you should be fine

It should be you who knows how to keep your bitcoins and wallet safe. You must trust a trusted wallet and make surr your bitcoins are in safer place. Technology is widely used and available right now. Many intelligent people can hack if they wanted to. You just have to secure your coins with all your might.

The safety of cryptocurrency depends on where and how it is stored. Keeping your cryptocurrency in centralized exchange and wallet where you do not have access to your private key is a recipe for hackers to easily have access. The owner of the cryptocurrency have a duty to ensure the safety of his cryptocurrency by ensuring he store or keep Is token or coin in wallet in which only him and him only have full access to the private key. He can do this by storing the cryptocurrency in cold wallet like ledger. He can also hold in decentralized exchanges or paper wallet. In summary the safety of cryptocurrency largely depends on the owner.

I'm going to keep an eye on it myself
Anyone talking like Bitcoin is unstoppable is not a trader...they are either a gambler or just a plain fool
I've hear people talking about anonymity with Bitcoin, but now here we have the exact opposite, should they comply
Education is the passport to the future! He who prepares today, owns tomorrow! But remember, Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

This doesn't answer the question of it being a "safe currency" to accept for business transactions or to store wealth.  Reason being is that all of the coins that were associated with the crime can/are traced throughout the coins life and carries some taint to them.  Sure you can send your coins through mixers, but that is also pretty sketchy and you would have to trust the mixing sites, or the people you are mixing with in the first place... and that doesn't even guarantee you anything because you are probably mixing your coins with other tainted coins.

This is true, you absolutely cannot trust a wallet you create Online on a centralized exchange service.  You can pretty much say with 100% accuracy that if you don't posses and know the private key(s)/mneumonic seed to your wallet, then you do not own the coins that are within that wallet.  When you open an account on an exchange, you might give them your info and create a user name and password, but all that doesn't matter on the blockchain... they know your private key to your wallet on there, so therefore they own your coins and you can't access them without the authority of the centralized party.

Cryptocurrency is safe, and what makes it so is the ability for addresses to change after very transaction, and also you are able to store you balance offline on a hardware wallet to avoid the online ones, online wallets have a 2FA which sends you a verification SMS containing a password each time you or somone logs in from a different IP to your wallet, and if you are keeping your crypto offline than the only way a person could hack you is by sending a virus or a keyloger to your computer.

It turns out, if a virus got to the computer and hackers hacked with it my account and brought tokens, then I can not do anything?
How then to secure yourself?

Now there are various ways which are adopted by several cryptocurrencies to track the transactions conducted by users. Also, the users are asked to provide KYC details while getting themselves registered. BitNautic is one such ICO that I'm aware of which has a genuine policy of getting their users listed and provides proper security. For further details, you could visit the BitNautic website.

To keep cryptocurrency is to save it to online exchange, In online cryptocurrency wallet, cryptocurrency purse software (for example in your PC), With a hardware purse this storage method is the one I think is safest to use because the hacker will not be able to hit physical buttons in hardware you to provide transaction approval, if the hardware is lost then it can be imported.

All managers and investors are eager for their cryptocurrency to be safe. Want to be so according to me the most important thing is to control the trading floor in a rational way, each asset one. Stock market is under control; They have strict rules between stocks. Avoid the case of investment fraudulent property. Speculation with counterfeit property will waste the money of investors, while the money can provide funding for valuable engineering projects.

Never leave any significant amount of crypto currency on an exchange. Especially if they aren't ensured. If they get hacked or steal your coins and claim they are hacked you lose. As soon as you make the trade get your coins off the exchange . Keep your coins in a hardware wallet like Trezor for example.   

The "cryptocurrency" carries some well-known risks—the price could drop precipitously, and scams have been reported. But there's also another, more technological danger: One crashed hard drive or online hacking incident can wipe out an owner's stash of Bitcoin, leaving them with essentially no recourse.

That's because of some basic differences between Bitcoin and a conventional currency such as dollars or Euros. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as Litecoin and Ethereum, are wholly digital forms of cash stored in so-called wallets. Like other files, Bitcoin wallets can be stored locally, say on a hard drive stuffed under a mattress, or in the cloud.

And like dollars, Bitcoin can be lost or stolen.

The price of these devices were going up nearly as fast as transaction fees back in December so I hope they get stuck with them
and are forced to sell them of for under $20 each because that's about all they are worth really and then I might pick one up.

For now I use pen en paper and cheap pen sticks to run Jaxx and Exodus wallets, cheap pen stick is a must have.

Crypto currencies are far more safer unless you mess up with login details or share it with some one or get with phishing website

Cryptocurrencies are not safe until your wallet and wallet credential are not safe. So keep in mind don't share your private key of secured wallet with any one. don't put your currency into un-secure wallet.

Crptocurrency’s are safe, if u don't share yr private key with anyone

For sure safer than banks  ;D

It's still a chaotic process when it goes to making defenses tight.

But then...

Still safer than banks ;D