MtGox account compromised

[bitdragon]

It's a cost for the group as a whole and this time you took the hit;
so thank you and I'll happily share some of the cost and donate a few coins to the amount of 55BTC

Not much but I don't have that many yet- but I made a copy of my wallet

[1715059370]

1715059370

[1715059370]

1715059370

[mtgox]

People keep asking me so...

The only accounts that were compromised were cryptofo and one other who I emailed. No other accounts were compromised. If you are still worried about it simply change your password.

I've paid out a lot to fraudsters since I started mtgox. But I admit I should have had something in place to prevent successive login attempts. But also a password such as abcd1234 is 4 letters and 4 numbers but would be found very quickly by any attack like this. 
Anyway it seems fair to restore half your coins.

[cryptofo]

Wow, bitdragon that really warms my heart.  I would really appreciate that.  I think this might be a good time to share a little more about myself and the project I have been working on and what led me to bitcoin in the first place.  It's a bit off topic and something I wasn't planning to share for a while as the project has been on the backburner while I've been busy with another project, but here goes.

I believe that what draws most of us to Bitcoin is an inherent desire for freedom and independence.  It is this same desire that drove me to invest many many hours and months into another project.  To some it may seem unrelated, but I have ideas and plans that could benefit both bitcoin as well my project.  At first there may seem to be no corelation, but as we dig deeper you will discover some very exciting possibilities.  They are lofty ambitions, but I'm building a framework for the future.  It's in it's infancy, but there is some core information on a video on my page openalcohol.org.  

To anyone who may want to donate some bitcoins to the project and/or to myself as I have just been robbed of 900+ there is a link to donate some bitcoins on this page.  http://openalcohol.org/node/25

At this point I won't dedicate to much about it here as this is a bitcoin forum, but if people are interested contact me at info@openalcohol.com and I will start doing my best to build up the site.

Thank you for your time and support
-Cryptofo

[cryptofo]

I think that would be incredibly fair also.  Thank you mtgox.

[kiba]

To anyone who may want to donate some bitcoins to the project and/or to myself as I have just been robbed of 900+ there is a link to donate some bitcoins on this page.  http://openalcohol.org/node/25

-Cryptofo

What is openalcohol?

[Nefario]

mtgox, how much have fraudsters cost you so far? And are you still making profit?

[cryptofo]

Openalcohol.org is to be the homepage for a project I am starting.  There is a video on it that I think you will find very interesting and the basis for my project.

[kiba]

come on guys, let finish with this topic and let it fall into annals of history and off the front page.

Falling off? I am waiting for MtGox to implement several major security reform or something like that.

[Anonymous]

20btc sent. It looks like an interesting project.

[bitcoinex]

come on guys, let finish with this topic and let it fall into annals of history and off the front page.

We can change annoying topic

[DELTA9]

I do not know what you guys will do, but I just withdrew all my funds to my bitcoin wallet and to my LR account.

Mt.Gox does not seem reliable to me now.

QFT.

I do not understand why anyone would keep their bitcoins w/ mtgox. An encrypted wallet.dat is the only way I will ever store mine.

[Nefario]

I do not know what you guys will do, but I just withdrew all my funds to my bitcoin wallet and to my LR account.

Mt.Gox does not seem reliable to me now.

QFT.

I do not understand why anyone would keep their bitcoins w/ mtgox. An encrypted wallet.dat is the only way I will ever store mine.

That means you will never be able to use any services that anyone provides.

[Keefe]

cryptofo:
Would you be willing to tell us the password you used, that the thief managed to guess? I assume you no longer use it anywhere. :-)

mtgox:
Could you tell us approximately how many login attempts were made by the thief before successfully guessing cryptofo's password? If it was less than say 10000, then we'd know it was just a really weak/guessable password.

I notice that there's now a delay when logging into mtgox.com, which I think is a great way to prevent major brute-force/dictionary attacks. But I'm wondering if you've implemented any additional login protections, such as longer delays after a certain number of failed attempts from a single IP?

[Keefe]

I ask because although "8 characters, numbers and letters" isn't very strong, it would take a huge number of attempts to purely brute-force if it were random. Or is the point here that it was a single word and a couple digits, easily broken by a dictionary attack? How weak was it really?

I use unique random 16-character passwords (upper, lower, and digits) most places. I assume I'm totally safe from the kind of attack that compromised cryptofo's account.

[caveden]

It is still the site owner responsibility. I'm not saying there's an obligation of refunding any losses, that's where the contracts, insurances and premiums come in, but rather that only the site owner could have prevented this, and I'm sure in this case Jed has already closed this particular hole.

Ok, it's just a semantics misunderstanding then... I find the word "responsibility" a strong one. If you say somebody was responsible for a criminal act like this one, I understand that s/he is guilty of it. And if you're guilty of a crime, you must pay for it.
MtGox is obviously not guilty of what happened, that's why I say they have no responsibility.

I would go so far as to say Jed should have an opt-in system that would raise the fee per transaction for those who chose to allow it, and the extra fees would go to a fund to cover just these situations, but then it would become very hard to separate real cases from scams, and I don't think Jed wants to become a lawyer (assuming  he's not one already)

This would be cool, but as you noticed, it's quite difficult... they would need to contract a external service probably, and I don't think there's enough volume for that.

[davout]

Falling off? I am waiting for MtGox to implement several major security reform or something like that.

Better, tell him to switch to an open source backend, so everyone will be able to inspect his source

[mrb]

Better, tell him to switch to an open source backend, so everyone will be able to inspect his source

Speaking of inspecting source, I inspected yours and am still waiting for you to use a safer password hashing function :-)

(For those not in the know: davout's Bitcoin Central platform hashes passwords with SHA256($pass.$salt). Although safer than the way most people hash passwords, this method is not safe enough because it does not implement iterated hashing to slow down bruteforce attacks. In a scenario where an attacker gains access to BC's hashes via SQL injection for example, the attacker would be able to bruteforce passwords at a rate of 1+ billion per second with one HD 5970. Iterated hashing like Linux's standard MD5-crypt slows this attack by multiple orders of magnitude.)

[mrb]

My bank snail mails lists of 300 one-use keys you need when logging in. A quicker but perhaps more expensive option is to send the keys in SMS.

Cool. What bank does this? If you don't mind sharing...

[davout]

Speaking of inspecting source, I inspected yours and am still waiting for you to use a safer password hashing function :-)

You can submit a patch if you'd like

(For those not in the know: davout's Bitcoin Central platform hashes passwords with SHA256($pass.$salt). Although safer than the way most people hash passwords, this method is not safe enough because it does not implement iterated hashing to slow down bruteforce attacks. In a scenario where an attacker gains access to BC's hashes via SQL injection for example, the attacker would be able to bruteforce passwords at a rate of 1+ billion per second with one HD 5970. Iterated hashing like Linux's standard MD5-crypt slows this attack by multiple orders of magnitude.)

If it was as simple as that I would've done it already, the hard part is not to replace the hash function, the hard part is update the passwords that are recorded in the database if you see what I mean

[mrb]

(For those not in the know: davout's Bitcoin Central platform hashes passwords with SHA256($pass.$salt). Although safer than the way most people hash passwords, this method is not safe enough because it does not implement iterated hashing to slow down bruteforce attacks. In a scenario where an attacker gains access to BC's hashes via SQL injection for example, the attacker would be able to bruteforce passwords at a rate of 1+ billion per second with one HD 5970. Iterated hashing like Linux's standard MD5-crypt slows this attack by multiple orders of magnitude.)

If it was as simple as that I would've done it already, the hard part is not to replace the hash function, the hard part is update the passwords that are recorded in the database if you see what I mean

The traditional way to handle a change of hashing algo is to have a transitional phase where 2 algos are supported in parallel in the DB. Whenever a user logs in and you detect an old hash format in the DB, just update it (you can because you have the pass during authentication). I would be glad to submit a patch but I am unlikely to find the time to do it.