Mt gox 2014 incident

[robertcarlyle]

When 850000 bitcoins were stolen on mt gox back in 2014, who was the true mastermind behind such breach?  Were all 850000 bitcoins fully recovered?  Why cant hackers today steal this much bitcoin like in this incident?  How was someone able to steal this much bitcoin back then but not today? 

[Stalker22]

When 850000 bitcoins were stolen on mt gox back in 2014, who was the true mastermind behind such breach? 

The true masterminds were Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner, two Russian nationals.  In 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice officially unsealed indictments against them. 
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/russian-nationals-charged-hacking-one-cryptocurrency-exchange-and-illicitly-operating-another

Were all 850000 bitcoins fully recovered? 

No.  The vast majority of the stolen Bitcoin is gone forever or liquidated a long time ago.

[robertcarlyle]

Then how were they able to steal this much bitcoin and other hackers havent been able to steal 850000 bitcoins like these guys?

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

When 850000 bitcoins were stolen on mt gox back in 2014, who was the true mastermind behind such breach?  Were all 850000 bitcoins fully recovered?  Why cant hackers today steal this much bitcoin like in this incident?  How was someone able to steal this much bitcoin back then but not today? 

Yes, I could remember coming across a news many years ago after an investigation was done that over 200,000 Bitcoin was recovered from the lost 850,000 Bitcoin worth $450million at that time in 2014 that was reported to have been hacked from My.gox exchange. And according to reports, we were made to understand that there are some factors which might have gave room to the successful hacking of the Mt.gox exchange back then in 2014, such as internal mismanagement by its staff and also long term security breaches which they neglected back then. And been one of the earliest crypto exchange, I'm 100% that our present crypto exchange have learnt from the mistake my.gox did 12years ago.

[PrivacyG]

Then how were they able to steal this much bitcoin and other hackers havent been able to steal 850000 bitcoins like these guys?

850 thousand Bitcoin were not worth as much as it would be worth today.  So that means anyone who got scammed in 2014 had a Bitcoin loss much larger than average losses today.

Anyway.  There are many hacks that happened after Mt Gox.  It does not directly involve Bitcoin however.  All of them are caused by other Third Parties.  Bitcoin is as secure as ever.

[robertcarlyle]

But how could hackers steal that much bitcoin back then but not today like mt gox 2014?  Arent hackers employing better hacking techniques today than in 2014?  What about the lubian hack?  Why couldnt the mt gox hackers launder all 850k bitcoins? 

[BitMaxz]

But how could hackers steal that much bitcoin back then but not today like mt gox 2014?  Arent hackers employing better hacking techniques today than in 2014?  What about the lubian hack?  Why couldnt the mt gox hackers launder all 850k bitcoins?  

Well, before, most exchanges, like Mt. Gox, had weak security protocols, and unlike today, most exchanges right now are using multisig wallets and have separate wallets, just like what Binance did before where the hack happened and only a portion was hacked around 2019 and 2022, but still, they are still alive because of having multiple multisig wallets.


There's a technical explanation about this how hacked happen on Mt. Gox before read more from this link below

- https://jimmysong.medium.com/mt-gox-hack-technical-explanation-37ea5549f715

[robertcarlyle]

But can we rule out the possibility that future hackers could pull off a massive bitcoin heist in the distant future??

[X-ray]

But can we rule out the possibility that future hackers could pull off a massive bitcoin heist in the distant future??

Future hackers focused on altcoin, recent biggest heist was Bybit and 1 billion is stolen because forged signing UI by the hackers. Why? because altcoin is less secure and complex which means more surface attack. However, it doesn't clear the fact that there might be some exchange who get hacked and get their bitcoin stolen in the future if they don't invest into security enough.

But how could hackers steal that much bitcoin back then but not today like mt gox 2014?  Arent hackers employing better hacking techniques today than in 2014?  What about the lubian hack?  Why couldnt the mt gox hackers launder all 850k bitcoins?  

Security wasn't as strong as today, so they could pull off such massive heist. Right now everybody is tightening their security through various security layer.

[DubemIfedigbo001]

But can we rule out the possibility that future hackers could pull off a massive bitcoin heist in the distant future??

We cannot actually write off such possibilities, but most exchanges have gotten wiser now, they leave only few BTC in their hot wallets and preserve a greater portion of the coins in their cold storage multi-signature wallets, so the possibility of such a heist is greatly reduced since social engineering only targets hot devices. Most exchanges learned from the mt. Gox experience and tightened their own security, although we still had recent hacks, but they're all tied to hot wallets and not cold wallets.

[Doan9269]

When 850000 bitcoins were stolen on mt gox back in 2014, who was the true mastermind behind such breach?  Were all 850000 bitcoins fully recovered?  Why cant hackers today steal this much bitcoin like in this incident?  How was someone able to steal this much bitcoin back then but not today? 

How do we know the mastermind behind all this, than what the media says, which you can easily check online by yourself to know about the incident.

Bitcoin value as at then wasn't the same today, most of us were not even probably into bitcoin before then, I don't think any scam related experience has full recovery of the coins that were lost, while government in most cases take seizure of some of those that were being recovered, the only best thing to do is for us to avoid anything that could lead to losing our assets when we make use of a custodian stoage, not your keys not your coins try as much as possible to make use of a non-custodial wallet.

[Livingleged]

850 thousand Bitcoin were not worth as much as it would be worth today.  So that means anyone who got scammed in 2014 had a Bitcoin loss much larger than average losses today.

Well, in as much as I agree with you, there is this fact known to all of us but ingnored  sometimes  that  1BTC will alway be 1BTC, regardless  of its equivalent in Fiat currencies. So the saying that 850 bitcoin were not worth as much as it's worth  today is True  somehow but if you look at it in the real sense  it's not so true due to the fact that bitcoin  is just  bitcoin  and we mostly  Dont consider  it price  in relation  to Fiat currencies. If those bitcoin  where preserved  till today it will not be any less valuable  as it is today but I get what you're  saying  though  I'm just trying  to bring  this point a well.

[YellowSwap]

When 850000 bitcoins were stolen on mt gox back in 2014, who was the true mastermind behind such breach?  Were all 850000 bitcoins fully recovered?  Why cant hackers today steal this much bitcoin like in this incident?  How was someone able to steal this much bitcoin back then but not today? 

Bitcoin was still new at the time.
People thought that thirdparty way of storing Bitcoin wasn't bad.

There aren't many vulnerability hacks and grabs happening at the time, and most importantly Bitcoin is not very valuable at the time.

If someone steal 850,000 Bitcoin today he will be found, all best online and offline pursuers will go after than person because the value of Bitcoin is too big right now and this massive amount is enough to cause big panic in the market.

That's not even why I replied to this post, with all the Mt.Gox and FTX and Luna, do you guys still now that so many people are still keeping their coins on the thirdparty crypto plaforms available today?

[OcTradism]

When 850000 bitcoins were stolen on mt gox back in 2014, who was the true mastermind behind such breach?  Were all 850000 bitcoins fully recovered?  Why cant hackers today steal this much bitcoin like in this incident?  How was someone able to steal this much bitcoin back then but not today? 

Hacked exchanges since 2011.
Bitcointalk history of MtGox and how a Bitcointalk post caught the MtGox hacker.

If you have time, you can read more details about Mt.Gox exchange and the hack which is a classic lesson for people in this market. Recent years, there are other lessons from Terra and FTX exchange, and after that theymos had to write a reminder.

Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts.

But like all other reminders, many people will ignore this one and continue their risky storage on centralized exchanges.

[Cookdata]

But how could hackers steal that much bitcoin back then but not today like mt gox 2014?  Arent hackers employing better hacking techniques today than in 2014?  What about the lubian hack?  Why couldnt the mt gox hackers launder all 850k bitcoins? 

That time, there was no adoption of cold storage unlike now, I'm not sure if there was anything like hardware wallet then, most exchanges at that time used hot wallets, and that was how the exchange was compromised. Today, we have a huge adoption of cold storage where centralized exchange keep large funds and keep the rest on their hot wallet,  even with this, there are some exchanges that have been hacked in recent years. Last year, Bybit was hacked, and Bitcoin and Ethereum worth billions were stolen, which was bigger than the value stolen from Mt gox, but today, the amount worth stolen MT gox is almost the size of the Strategy, which can kill the price of Bitcoin if such an amount is stolen today.

The stolen Bitcoin of Bybit that happened last year here most were laundered through some dexes like Thorchain, all these were not around when Mt gox was hacked that time but that does not mean the hacker is safe, some of the laundered coins are still traceable, some of the converted Bitcoins are in other coins like ethereum, if they decide to spend any of those coins to fiat, they will be caught, these money are too large to spend, they are moving on different chains that has liquidity, ethereum takes large share but they can't convert to fiat.

Crime doesn't pay, assuming they return that amount, they would have been compensated with something good instead of running around with stolen money you can't spend.

[Franklyn-wood]

When 850000 bitcoins were stolen on mt gox back in 2014, who was the true mastermind behind such breach?  Were all 850000 bitcoins fully recovered?  Why cant hackers today steal this much bitcoin like in this incident?  How was someone able to steal this much bitcoin back then but not today? 

Hacked exchanges since 2011.
Bitcointalk history of MtGox and how a Bitcointalk post caught the MtGox hacker.

If you have time, you can read more details about Mt.Gox exchange and the hack which is a classic lesson for people in this market. Recent years, there are other lessons from Terra and FTX exchange, and after that theymos had to write a reminder.

Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts.

But like all other reminders, many people will ignore this one and continue their risky storage on centralized exchanges.

The journey of Bitcoin has really not been easy, despite all the experience of MT. Gox and all the investors during that erra other, Bitcoin is still standing in about two decade the value of Bitcoin has drastically increased despite the challenges it has faced over this year, compared with fiat which have stayed longer and did not face as much challenge like Bitcoin.
It is highly recommended for every one joining the market to chose a reputable and reliable platform to use, that is secure and chosing the right storage system.

[AVE5]

When 850000 bitcoins were stolen on mt gox back in 2014, who was the true mastermind behind such breach?  Were all 850000 bitcoins fully recovered?  Why cant hackers today steal this much bitcoin like in this incident?  How was someone able to steal this much bitcoin back then but not today? 

I can't recall if I've come across this news before and I'll also admit that I was also part of the people being skeptical about bitcoin by that 2014 when such event took place.
However, from my research after coming across this thread lately yesterday it was gathered that there was no particular source person or loophole responsible for the disappearance of the 850,000 bitcoins while unverified wrong fingers also pointed on the exchange CEO for diverting the funds but no prove with others exaggerating it was due to weakened security of the platform and many more reasons pointing at the possibilities of how the coin COULD be missing but of all no evidence to prove the claims.

[mindrust]

When 850000 bitcoins were stolen on mt gox back in 2014, who was the true mastermind behind such breach?  Were all 850000 bitcoins fully recovered?  Why cant hackers today steal this much bitcoin like in this incident?  How was someone able to steal this much bitcoin back then but not today? 

Bitcoin wasn't that important back then and its legal status wasn't clear... The authorities were confused about it. They didn't know what to do about it because it wasn't classified as money or a commodity as far as I remember. (maybe it was classified as commodity, not sure when SEC made their mind about that) One thing is for sure, the media didn't care much about it. There were many exchange hacks back in the day. Exchanges were going down one after another.

Today the regulations are more strict. Most exchanges require special licenses to operate. They are not much different than banks really. They are crypto banks in practice.

[BlackHatCoiner]

It wasn't really one big hack with a single mastermind. The coins leaked out slowly starting around 2011 and nobody noticed until Mt. Gox had collapsed. The DOJ later charged two Russians (Bilyuchenko and Verner, as already mentioned). Not all came back, but around 200k turned up in an old forgotten wallet, which is why creditors are finally getting repaid now.

It's harder today mainly because serious exchanges keep funds in cold storage with multisig.

[Ambatman]

Adding to what has been said before
The hack started around 2011 and money was been siphoned gradually until 2014
Without the exchange noticing because well their security and accounting standard was sub-par.
Not to mention that the practice now of using cold wallet or multisig wasn't implemented by them.
They face same situation we usually face that it would never happen to me and get complacent with security.

That time, there was no adoption of cold storage

There was.
The essence of cold storage is keeping the private in a way they can't be accessed  via the internet.