I'm MtGox, here's my side.

[magik]

I know MagicalTux is only really posting these scant details in reaction to Mark's public posting of his side of the story.  But I think the problem I have with all of this, is I have not seen any proof that the leaked DB has anything to even do with this crash.

I think you need to provide some information regarding how you can proove that this was a result of a hacking.  There are a lot of details you are leaving out that are critical to the public's understanding of what has actually happened.  All we know as users for certain is that the market crashed.  You claim you were hacked.  But we still have no idea if this is one single user's account, or if it was some sort of MtGox account that sold the bitcoins.  I don't think this public statements are doing any good for either side ( MtGox or Kevin ) - all you guys are doing is trying to convince the public of your views.

Proove to us that these 500k bitcoins were actually stolen.  That's my largest problem with these story - were they even stolen?  How do we know they were stolen?  How can we blindly trust what you've said when you've been so very lacking with detail?  Are we supposed to take your word at face value and just assume it's the truth?  Hell, if you don't want to expose more info than you need to, why don't you contact Mark directly and proove to him that this was actually stolen property that he bought.  Because as far as I'm concerned right now, it's not stolen until it's proven/shown that it was stolen.  Let Mark be the one to tell the community that the proof looks real.  I'd be slightly more happy with the explanation of the situation now if Mark agreed to give the bitcoins back because they were stolen property - because you were able to proove to him that it was stolen.

Just the fact alone that you've had these security problems and so much trouble and drama these past weeks, your word is not credible in my opinion.  You guys have not been transparent enough in your security vulnerabilities to leave full trust in your word any more.

I think you guys owe us all at least a redacted version of what the hell actually happened.

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[TraderTimm]

MT posts some random selective login (why?) logs, and you immediately believe him? hmm.

I posted all the logins on Kevin's and the hacked account for May 19th.

MagicalTux, don't sweat the idiots. I get why you have to do what you're doing. I've traded on different exchanges, futures, forex, options. Appreciate the additional information. Just do what you need to do, let the trolls simmer and boil in their own juices, its what they are best at.

Look forward to the re-opening.

[neneko]

Let me show you the login logs for our hacker guy on his account full of bitcoins, and Kevin:

Code:

[2011/06/19 05:00:02] Hacker login
[2011/06/19 05:12:10] Kevin login
[2011/06/19 05:15:10] Hacker login
[2011/06/19 05:22:35] Hacker login
[2011/06/19 05:45:39] Hacker login
[2011/06/19 06:08:18] Hacker login

I don't understand. Which account? Kevin and the hacker used the same account?

Yeah Please Explain this Jargon, And what is it that you're implying by it?

He is saying that Kevin logged in 12 minutes after the attacker logged in to start the attack.  Not damning by itself, and almost certainly a coincidence, but still a connection that needs to be followed up, particularly in light of how it all played out.

And placed a buy order at 0.01 USD per btc.

its quite odd that Kevin could login when the rest of us couldn't.  i watched the whole thing unfold and i certainly couldn't get in.
the other thing MT might be implying is that Kevin logged into the hacked acct?  now that would be damning.  please clarify?

He logged in 3 minutes before the whole thing unfold.

So the crash started 05:15?
Does that tally with the Windows time in this vid? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1X6qQt9ONg

His windows time seems a bit off for some reason but it does match the timestamps from the ticker in his cmd window.

This proves nothing though. Obviously anyone that made a profit from the crash were logged in around the same time the hacker was since that's when the crash happened. If magicaltux can provide logs showing that kevin put the buy order at 0.01 USD per bitcoin before the market started going down then that would be reason for suspicion but magicaltux haven't made that part public and possibly can't (I'm not sure what the rules on banking secrecy is here) even if such logs exist.

[Oldminer]

MT posts some random selective login (why?) logs, and you immediately believe him? hmm.

Use your head.

If criminal investigations are underway, which it appears there are, and these investigations involve 'Kevin', it would be logical to assume Mtgox would have been told by their lawyers NOT to reveal specific details of the login and what occured less they jeapordise their case. Regardless, commonsense dictates they dont reveal specifics at this point in time pending legal action.

I'm sure MT has revealed a few logs without any further detail or allegations, to show Kevins claim is simply untrue.

Nothing else needs to be said at this stage.

[Klestin]

Would be nice to hear an answer on this.  Mt.Gox has said a single account was compromised, with 500,000 BTC.  Is that still their position?

[DonnyCMU]

If the official Mt.Gox is posting publicly on issues like this, it should be some concrete facts that can lead to concrete conclusions, not some general info that mislead someone into thinking negatively on Kevin like this.

Hundreds of people probably log-in to Mt.Gox during 5:00-6:00, Kevins could be just one of them.

Hundreds of people is probably watching the price tumbling down. So, hundreds of people must be trying to make a low-ball buy order at a very low price. Keven tried (and somehow successfully) made one too, at $0.01.


So, UNLESS magicalTux give more hard facts, like if Kevin make the order BEFORE the crash happens, what Tux said doesn't really proof anything, yet people could already associate Kevin with the hacker! And I think this is unfair for Kevin.

PS. I support the roll-back option, and disagree with most of Kevin's points though.
PS2. Could someone just ban, or at least delete Synaptic's comments?

[Clipse]

Ok can we get some sanity checks please?

Mtgox have been running and growing all of our(most of us atleast) wallets by offering a service for the past 2 months, please tell me why when something like this happens you would prefer to pick the side of literally just another person over the provider of a service that was running without any hassles until roughly a week ago when some weird stuff started to happen on the exchange.

Up until that point we have had nothing but a stable service with no issues, its clear something went wrong with their database and shit like that can happen(as long as it gets resolved now once and for all) and no one can predict that this site would have grown probably 100x its user size in just a month.

Now here is the interesting part, everyone moaning at mtgox in this thread have been more than happy to utilise the service and make their own wallet phat with loot from exchanging however the moment something went wrong you would pick the side of:

a.) a user whos never been active in the bitcoin forum
b.) a user who magically decide to place order of >200k sometime on the same date the crash happened(i state sometime since people here dont believe mtgox stating it was before the crash happened)
c.) a user who posted about himself and that he contact mtgox on irc cause he thought it was stolen funds and wanted to know how to go about it.

Its stolen, he said he thought so himself in his own thread, why is this discussion still going on about what should/shouldnt be done? Do any of you actually try to argue a point that the stolen funds could be kept and have no issue with that?

If that is your mentality then please get the fk off the bitcoin network and go play with everyday corrupt fiat currencies, I am confident bitcoin actually dont want people like you.

[MoonShadow]

I think you guys owe us all at least a redacted version of what the hell actually happened.

Do you think that you could wait until they have had a chance to figure it out?

[SpaceLord]

So Kevin, by his own admission:

*Had deposited 3000 USD into his account over the past few weeks, slowly.
*On Sunday, logged in around the same time as the hacker.
*Put his whole 3k into 1 cent BTC orders

I'm not saying anything either way, but that's fortuitous? for him.

What time was this order placed? What was the going BTC rate? 10$? 5$? 14? Wouldn't it make more sense to try to get a few hundred at 1$, then the rest at a penny?

Is MagicalTux ever going to give any details about what account was compromised? How much money was withdrawn between the start of the compromise, and the shutdown of the site? How much BTC was pulled out?

Questions abound!  

[bitplane]

MT posts some random selective login (why?) logs, and you immediately believe him? hmm.

I posted all the logins on Kevin's and the hacked account for May 19th.

We're gambling men, give us the stats, not selective facts.

How many other people logged in at the same time? Surely he wasn't the only person.
Does Kevin's story hold true, that he saw the price crashing to under $10 before he made any offer to buy?
How many other people also put really low bids in at around the same time? Was he the only one? Was he the highest of the low? Was he the only suspicious transaction?

Publish the stats and let people make their minds up based on probability, this fact-mining exercise doesn't do you any favours.

[Gandlaf]

I think you guys owe us all at least a redacted version of what the hell actually happened.

Do you think that you could wait until they have had a chance to figure it out?

Another 6 months?

Does anyone still remember how MtGox handled the last situation where there was a large amount at stake for MtGox?

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3712.0

That guy explained himself, was hounded by the community, MtGox barely bothered to respond, made some outlandish claims, froze funds and rapidly moved the whole operation to a different jurisdiction (Japan) after the guy finaly decided to get lawyers involved.

MtGox promised to inform the community! No news yet, and it´s been 6 months!

[ius]

What timezone are the logs in? To my knowledge, the first major crash was well in-progress at around 17:50 (UTC). JST is UTC+9, so the logs aren't in JST?

Also:
- The logs do not indicate when Kevin has placed his order.
- They don't show the logins and orders of all others trying to get their piece of the 'dump'

Further questions:
- All that has been released with respect to the user info leak was that it was a third party who was compromised
- What was compromised exactly? A database dump? MySQL credentials? If the latter, how were they used to obtain the database (remote?)?
- When was the information compromised, and when was the table snapshot made?
- Why did the auditor have access to user data in the first place?
- How come the auditor was compromised. Was it coincidence? A targeted attack? I don't think the existence of a financial auditor was public knowledge. How would an attacker know, assuming it was targeted?

Questions, questions..

[bitbitcoincoin]

Ok can we get some sanity checks please?

Mtgox have been running and growing all of our(most of us atleast) wallets by offering a service for the past 2 months, please tell me why when something like this happens you would prefer to pick the side of literally just another person over the provider of a service that was running without any hassles until roughly a week ago when some weird stuff started to happen on the exchange.

Up until that point we have had nothing but a stable service with no issues, its clear something went wrong with their database and shit like that can happen(as long as it gets resolved now once and for all) and no one can predict that this site would have grown probably 100x its user size in just a month.

Now here is the interesting part, everyone moaning at mtgox in this thread have been more than happy to utilise the service and make their own wallet phat with loot from exchanging however the moment something went wrong you would pick the side of:

a.) a user whos never been active in the bitcoin forum
b.) a user who magically decide to place order of >200k sometime on the same date the crash happened(i state sometime since people here dont believe mtgox stating it was before the crash happened)
c.) a user who posted about himself and that he contact mtgox on irc cause he thought it was stolen funds and wanted to know how to go about it.

Its stolen, he said he thought so himself in his own thread, why is this discussion still going on about what should/shouldnt be done? Do any of you actually try to argue a point that the stolen funds could be kept and have no issue with that?

If that is your mentality then please get the fk off the bitcoin network and go play with everyday corrupt fiat currencies, I am confident bitcoin actually dont want people like you.

great post

[magik]

I think you guys owe us all at least a redacted version of what the hell actually happened.

Do you think that you could wait until they have had a chance to figure it out?

I think I could have already - I was expecting more information once they reopened the market.

But now that there is this public drama with both sides posting, the cat's out of the bag.  You can't try to explain this crap with minimal to no evidence of these accusations, and then say, well details will be given out at some point later in time.  It's too late, they shouldn't have aired this dirty laundry here in the first place

And for all we know - with what little actual facts we have - Mark possibly even saved MtGox's ass, what if the supposed "hacker" had set the target to 0.01 - Mark's bid of .011 might have kept these bitcoins in the market so that MtGox even had a chance of recovering from the damage.  All because he was honest and didn't try to exploit the system and remove all of the bitcoins so they would be out of MtGox's reach.

edit: I may have my names wrong, is Mark = torch?

How about just some more facts about why MagicalTux thinks torch is the hacker or affiliated with him?  Were there any other huge buy orders around that 0.01 price range?  In the range of 500k bitcoins?  I'm not siding with torch either, hell for all I know he is laundering the money for the "hacker".  The problem here is we have absolutely no credible information to work on.

[bitrebel]

Mark: Hi Mr FBI agent......My Name is Mark from Mt Gox.....

FBI: What does it stand for?

Mark: Oh, it stand for Magic the Gathering Online Exchange.

FBI: What the fuck is that?

Mark: We'll, it's really irrelevant to anything. I'm here to report a theft from a hacking break-in.

FBI: What happened?

Mark: Well, I run this online bitcoin exchange....

FBI: What the fuck is that?

Mark: Well, bitcoins are a form of digital currency that is not really currency.

FBI: Well, if it's not currency, then what is it?

Mark: It's a series of encrypted numbers that keep transactions between people anonymous. Nobody can know who bought or spent them.

FBI: Yes, go on...please keep talking....

Mark: So, you see, I run this exchange from Japan, and someone logged in from Hong Kong and tried to make a huge sell off of 500,000 bitcoins at once.

FBI: and who owned these bitcoins?

Mark: We don't really know, because it's anonymous.

FBI: Okay, go on. Keep talking....

Mark: So, then this person we suspect of being the hacker, Kevin, had placed a buy right after the hacker logged in and tried to make his sell off.

FBI: And what evidence do you have that Kevin is the hacker?

Mark: None, it's just that if we don't have anyone to blame, then we have to payout the full 500,000 bitcoins from our own purse.

FBI: Were these accounts protected somehow?

Mark: No, not really.

FBI: What is the current value of the bitcoins stolen?

Mark: no way to really know for sure.

FBI: How do we know you didn't steal them from yourselves or other members, and try to sell them all off, thus laundering them through your own exchange, and buying them back up at .01 each, allowing you to make off with 500,000 bitcoins worth 2 million dollars, but Kevin came in and made equal buy orders, thus cutting your stolen profits in half?

Mark: Well, we can't really prove that we didn't, but Kevin logged in 5 minutes after the hacker did!

FBI: Come with us, please.

Bye Bye, Mt Gox!

[elggawf]

This indicates that Kevin put that buy order for 0.01 almost an hour before the hacker started selling off everything. Which is a bit suspicious, I mean, who puts in buy orders for one cents, and $3000 worth of it to boot?

To be fair, I put one in on TradeHill just before I left home for a few hours, because I saw a paste of a paste of a paste of what was allegedly Atlas saying that if MtGox went through with the rollback he was going to liquidate his 250kBTC, and I thought "plz do".

[epii]

I think you guys owe us all at least a redacted version of what the hell actually happened.

Do you think that you could wait until they have had a chance to figure it out?

Another 6 months?

Does anyone still remember how MtGox handled the last situation where there was a large amount at stake for MtGox?

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3712.0

That guy explained himself, was hounded by the community, MtGox barely bothered to respond, made some outlandish claims, froze funds and rapidly moved the whole operation to a different jurisdiction (Japan) after the guy finaly decided to get lawyers involved.

MtGox promised to inform the community! No news yet, and it´s been 6 months!

That's at least the third time you've posted that now.  Not that I think you have an agenda or anything.

While we're quoting our own posts:

It's a controversial incident and I don't claim to have all the facts, but for the sake of cutting through the FUD... it's actually only been three months since Mt. Gox commented on this:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3712.msg57901#msg57901
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3712.msg62282#msg62282

The last comment was that they couldn't say anything more because it might go to trial.  This will be satisfactory for some people and not for others, but there is no clear evidence that they ever behaved unprofessionally.

[TriumVir]

The 500k bitcoin question: what is the relationship between the owners of the "hacked" mega account and Mt.Gox . . . and how might that relationship have played a role in this fiasco?

[jaybny]

What is this supposed to indicate?  That Kevin put his sell order in before the selloff began, rather than during or after the 30-some minute trade finished up, like he said?

It indicates Kevin logged in 10 minutes after the sell-off began and put in his buy order for 0.01c - now one could assume from that either:

A. He had inside knowledge and could even be involved in the scam (and could even know the hacker)

or

B. It was pure coincidence he logged in at the same time and just happened to put in his 0.01c buy order which didnt exist prior to this login and he knew nothing about what was about to occur

Now if I was a gambling man, which I am, I'd put my money on option A.

Your all missing something here.... odds are that a person logging in smack in middle of major selloff.. will be the one to place the order to buy .01 . Someone who logged in 30 minutes prior may not be paying 100% attention to  the screen.

If I happened to see what was going on.. I would have done the same thing. Any trader worth anything would do the same thing. I've seen many 1,000,000 size orders at .01 go into MtGox. I even posted it on the forum once.. huge orders below .10 .

1) fact: Many traders would place that .01 bid , if they see a flash crash
2) fact: Odds that your are 100% focused on mtgox , is highest as soon as you login.
3) the fact that the trader who placed the .01 bid happened to login 10 minutes after the hacker.. MAKES SENSE! Kevin got lucky by being in the right place at the right time.

These logs prove nothing.

Although the question remains, what was the motivation of the hacker to crash the market?
 


 

[thefussydutchman]

I am unable to login to Mt. Gox.  Says they don't have my email.   Is this true for everyone or what. I really can't get a clear response. Thank you.