Was Autumn Radtke murdered due to something she knew about Brock Pierce, et al.?

[JorgeStolfi]

she followed finshaggy

Is "finshaggy" this person: http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=finshaggy

but i still think that Autumn committed suicide as she was being blamed for losing alot of investor money due to bad decisions. [ ... ] i believe she lost alot of first meta investment in the mtgox affair and was left with all the blame due to asshole partner of her denying any ties to the funds

It may have been a suicide, but "losing a lot of investor money due to bad decisions" does not seem to be enough reason for killing oneself in that community.   She had not been charged with anything it seems.  Also, the timing was not right, was it?  It was a while before the extent of the loss at MtGOX became known, IIRC.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

It's sad when another thread of mine having less relevance has more hits than one concerning the mysterious death of a fellow bitcoiner. Hell, even FinShaggy, who Autumn followed, could muster up more posts with his brand then this tread has.

i do love your detective work P.G

but i still think that Autumn committed suicide as she was being blamed for losing alot of investor money due to bad decisions. as we all know that fin shaggy is a money grabbing scammer(totally unrelated to brock/first meta), that if autumn was following him, it shows her naive nature to trust scamming assholes, lead to a decision to commit suicide.

i do not think that anyone ordered a hit on her. but i do think that committing suicide due to trusting assholes, played more of a logical part in the incident.
as we know:
1. she followed brock pierce. the number 1 asshole
2. she followed finshaggy, less of an asshole but still an asshole. so it still goes to show she trusted the wrong people
3. no one would commit suicide over just knowing a asshole. but making a huge financial mistake due to assholes.. now thats more logical

i believe she lost alot of first meta investment in the mtgox affair and was left with all the blame due to asshole partner of her denying any ties to the funds

Take a look at the archives.org version of firstmeta.com. They were doing great way before Autumn came on board. After she came on board a handful months later, FM received more VC. For the founder of FM to recruit AR due to her work at xFire is one hell of a stretch, thus I contend she was offered up. Both VC entities are located in Block #71 where the corp. add. of where FM is located, well Autumn worked chiefly from home cum office where GoCoin had their office, along where Steve Beauregard stayed while in Singapore away from his wife and family (If you're thing... that's exacting what I'm implying).

You interested in a link depicting Autumn in arms of 100+ various men yet? Do you have a pretty niece, or some other family member, with only a high school diploma interested in working for Apple consisting of some cushion position? If so, talk her outta it, for she could see the world via entering some other industry. I'm just saying.

Let me put the above in perspective in as delicately as possible.

Let's say, for sake of argument, that Gavin somehow, someway, got himself in some precarious predicament, i.e. fucking some chick that wasn't his wife while in some other city (guess I just tossed delicately outta the window). At what lengths would Gavin go to make sure his wife, family, assets, etc. are not made aware/interrupted?

That is the game these fucks play - and worst - off the backs of those who know how to use shovels, saws, hammers, and other tools of various trades. All thanks to the advent of the internet and having the gift of gab - think preacher or politician.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

she followed finshaggy

Is "finshaggy" this person: http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=finshaggy

but i still think that Autumn committed suicide as she was being blamed for losing alot of investor money due to bad decisions. [ ... ] i believe she lost alot of first meta investment in the mtgox affair and was left with all the blame due to asshole partner of her denying any ties to the funds

It may have been a suicide, but "losing a lot of investor money due to bad decisions" does not seem to be enough reason for killing oneself in that community.   She had not been charged with anything it seems.  Also, the timing was not right, was it?  It was a while before the extent of the loss at MtGOX became known, IIRC.

Unless she had inside info, albeit suicide or murder would still be in play. She was a close ally of Brock Pierce, and we already know that Sunlot was in negotiations with Mt Gox.

That's our Fin! BTW, what's up these weird-ass Phinn characters?  

[jbreher]

Is "finshaggy" this person: http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=finshaggy.

WTF is the deal with McKinney? It's just a little town of under 150K. But it spat out not only fin shaggy, but pirate@40 too.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Need help from the community to determine if the guy in the first image is similar the guy in the two subsequent images.

[JorgeStolfi]

Need help from the community to determine if the guy in the first image is similar the guy in the two subsequent images.

Could be, but may not be...

The hair is black in the first photo, GGB's is grayer.
GGB's eyebrows are tapered, the first guy's seem to be more even.
GGB's cheeks are rather full, the top guy's do not seem to be.

I see that the top photo is from Silk Road Technology and labeled "France Team"
http://www.glassdoor.com/Photos/SilkRoad-Technology-Office-Photos-E34709.htm

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Need help from the community to determine if the guy in the first image is similar the guy in the two subsequent images.

Could be, but may not be...

The hair is black in the first photo, GGB's is grayer.
GGB's eyebrows are tapered, the first guy's seem to be more even.
GGB's cheeks are rather full, the top guy's do not seem to be.

I see that the top photo is from Silk Road Technology and labeled "France Team"
http://www.glassdoor.com/Photos/SilkRoad-Technology-Office-Photos-E34709.htm

You earn a badge from psy. Wait till you see my next thread (only a few minutes to pen, but epic as hell).

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Need help from the community to determine if the guy in the first image is similar the guy in the two subsequent images.

Could be, but may not be...

The hair is black in the first photo, GGB's is grayer.
GGB's eyebrows are tapered, the first guy's seem to be more even.
GGB's cheeks are rather full, the top guy's do not seem to be.

I see that the top photo is from Silk Road Technology and labeled "France Team"
http://www.glassdoor.com/Photos/SilkRoad-Technology-Office-Photos-E34709.htm

You earn a badge from psy. Wait till you see my next thread (only a few minutes to pen, but epic as hell).

Here it is: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624279.0

[yesmanfan]

So a it goes a little something like this:

 Brock Pierce and Alan Debboneville and Mark Rector and Shackley all join the same guild on some stupid online game.

All of them go into business together - IGE.com (video game currency exchange i believe)

competing with Jonathan Yantis (he was #1 in market, they were #2)

After some battles, they merge the 2 companies.

Brock buys Yantis out. Forces Debboneville out. Yantis gets brought back in by Brock. Debboneville sues.

in the lawsuit, Debboneville claims Yantis was brought back for this reason:

yantis also advised debonville that if a deal was not reached with ige, yantis had already put a network in place to compete with and destroy ige. yantis also stated that through the hiring of certain individuals who he had a long time relationship with, Yantis would sell currency that had been exploited or duped.

Exploing or duping is a process whereby an outsider hacks the game program into creating currency for the individual or duplicating an item and then selling it over and over which also results the creation of currency. Thes actions allow for the exploiter/duper to create an endless supply of currency without any real cost to that currency. This is something that Yantis had done in the past and had made large profits from. The exploiter/duper would typically receive a commission for any currency sold of about 40% of the sales price. Due to the currency being exploited, Yantis was and would be able to sell currency at a price significantly below market, since the cost of the currency sold was non existent. This also allowed for an infinite supply to be created in what could take as little time as a few minutes.

Yantis indidcated that this was also how he could turn the trading arm of IGE around and make it profitable, almost instantly. Pierce was aware of Yantis' intent to use these exploits. In fact, Pierce counted on them as part of the rationale behind why Yantis should be brought back to work for IGE.

[yesmanfan]

Mt Gox targeted by a hacker for "years" and somehow they never noticed until 97% of their reserves were stolen. Sure!

In late February, MtGox disappeared from the internet. The website was wiped clean and Twitter accounts were closed as one of the most trustworthy of Bitcoin’s many exchanges crumbled. A leaked memo reveals some of the story: in what seems to be an unparalleled, multi-year hack, the exchange had been made insolvent and its reserves had been pillaged.

$450M OF BITCOINS ‘LOST’ BY MTGOX

Nearly 850,000 bitcoins – 750,000 belonging to users and 100,000 to the exchange – vanished; spirited away and protected by the pseudo-anonymity that Bitcoin offers. It is pseudo-anonymity, as opposed to complete invisibility, because Bitcoin’s global ledger is completely transparent, allowing anyone to see transactions that have taken place between Bitcoin wallets, but diving through the myriad of data is a forensic activity in itself.

other bitcoin exchanges begin to get hacked in late feb. notice the timing, the hacker waited to attack the other ones because he knew they would notice very quickly and barely be able to get any money. so he waited to hack them until he had already drained Mt Gox. also notice that all of the other exchanges noticed the attack extremely quickly but for some odd reason. Mt Gox never noticed it for multiple years until 97% of their bitcoins were stolen.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/15/5414610/bitstamp-restores-service-after-targeted-attack%20

now here is the description of the hacker's technique:

Then, for much of February, customers were unable to complete withdrawals because of so-called ‘transaction malleability’ – a bug in the software that can be exploited to mask transactions to make it seem that they did not actually occur. It is this bug that many believe has drained MtGox dry and left it unable to complete legitimate withdrawals.

The second incarnation of the Silk Road has run into some trouble, with the administrator known as Defcon claiming today the site has fallen victim to a hack, and that all the associated accounts have been emptied. Judging by the blockchain records, attackers made off with roughly $2.7 million in bitcoin, the site's complete holdings. According to Defcon, the hack exploited the same "transaction malleability" bug that caused temporary shutdowns at Mt Gox and BitStamp earlier this week. He claims a vendor exploited the bug during a vulnerable moment in the site's relaunch process, initiating and hiding a flood of transactions until the accounts were emptied.

seems to me that Yantis' technique for hacking currency in video games is eerily similar to the technique used by the bitcoin hacker. Yantis and Brock are or were partners. connections with mt gox, connections with autumn radke.... maybe autumn had evidence of who the hacker was.

[TKeenan]

Mt Gox targeted by a hacker for "years" and somehow they never noticed until 97% of their reserves were stolen. Sure!

In late February, MtGox disappeared from the internet. The website was wiped clean and Twitter accounts were closed as one of the most trustworthy of Bitcoin’s many exchanges crumbled. A leaked memo reveals some of the story: in what seems to be an unparalleled, multi-year hack, the exchange had been made insolvent and its reserves had been pillaged.

$450M OF BITCOINS ‘LOST’ BY MTGOX

Nearly 850,000 bitcoins – 750,000 belonging to users and 100,000 to the exchange – vanished; spirited away and protected by the pseudo-anonymity that Bitcoin offers. It is pseudo-anonymity, as opposed to complete invisibility, because Bitcoin’s global ledger is completely transparent, allowing anyone to see transactions that have taken place between Bitcoin wallets, but diving through the myriad of data is a forensic activity in itself.

other bitcoin exchanges begin to get hacked in late feb. notice the timing, the hacker waited to attack the other ones because he knew they would notice very quickly and barely be able to get any money. so he waited to hack them until he had already drained Mt Gox. also notice that all of the other exchanges noticed the attack extremely quickly but for some odd reason. Mt Gox never noticed it for multiple years until 97% of their bitcoins were stolen.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/15/5414610/bitstamp-restores-service-after-targeted-attack%20

now here is the description of the hacker's technique:

Then, for much of February, customers were unable to complete withdrawals because of so-called ‘transaction malleability’ – a bug in the software that can be exploited to mask transactions to make it seem that they did not actually occur. It is this bug that many believe has drained MtGox dry and left it unable to complete legitimate withdrawals.

The second incarnation of the Silk Road has run into some trouble, with the administrator known as Defcon claiming today the site has fallen victim to a hack, and that all the associated accounts have been emptied. Judging by the blockchain records, attackers made off with roughly $2.7 million in bitcoin, the site's complete holdings. According to Defcon, the hack exploited the same "transaction malleability" bug that caused temporary shutdowns at Mt Gox and BitStamp earlier this week. He claims a vendor exploited the bug during a vulnerable moment in the site's relaunch process, initiating and hiding a flood of transactions until the accounts were emptied.

seems to me that Yantis' technique for hacking currency in video games is eerily similar to the technique used by the bitcoin hacker. Yantis and Brock are or were partners. connections with mt gox, connections with autumn radke.... maybe autumn had evidence of who the hacker was.

You are not the first to notice Yantis is probably involved. 

[JorgeStolfi]

now here is the description of the hacker's technique:

Then, for much of February, customers were unable to complete withdrawals because of so-called ‘transaction malleability’ – a bug in the software that can be exploited to mask transactions to make it seem that they did not actually occur. It is this bug that many believe has drained MtGox dry and left it unable to complete legitimate withdrawals.

The second incarnation of the Silk Road has run into some trouble, with the administrator known as Defcon claiming today the site has fallen victim to a hack, and that all the associated accounts have been emptied. Judging by the blockchain records, attackers made off with roughly $2.7 million in bitcoin, the site's complete holdings. According to Defcon, the hack exploited the same "transaction malleability" bug that caused temporary shutdowns at Mt Gox and BitStamp earlier this week. He claims a vendor exploited the bug during a vulnerable moment in the site's relaunch process, initiating and hiding a flood of transactions until the accounts were emptied.

I don't know about Yantis's involvement, but the claim that the MtGOX hacker exploited the "transaction malelability bug" was dismissed by a group of MIT researchers:  

During the year or so that they have been gathering their data, Decker and Wattenhofer have observed a total of 302,000 bitcoins involved in malleability attacks. However, the vast majority of these occurred after MtGox’s February 10 press release, and appear to be copycat attacks triggered by the news that they could be successful. These, presumably, cannot have involved MtGox because it had prevented its customers from accessing their accounts by then. [ ... ] “As such, barely 386 bitcoins could have been stolen using malleability attacks from MtGox or from other businesses,” they conclude.

Perhaps, who knows, those transaction malelability attacks were issued by MtGOX managers themselves, in an attempt to cover up what really happened.

seems to me that Yantis' technique for hacking currency in video games is eerily similar to the technique used by the bitcoin hacker. Yantis and Brock are or were partners. connections with mt gox, connections with autumn radke.... maybe autumn had evidence of who the hacker was.

I do not find that likely, since the "transaction malelability" attack seems too specific to the bitcoin protocol.  In particular, it depends on the "best effort" propagation of the transaction requests, that allows the "malleated" requests to get ahead of the true ones; and on the faulty logic allegedly used by MtGOX to detect failed requests.  Computer games depend on centralized servers and more deterministic connections.  

However, it is possible that Yantis's exploit involved some synchronization bug too.

As for the death of Autumn Radtke, It is hard to dismiss the idea that it was somehow connected to the collapse of MtGOX. The coincidence of dates and business area, her close connection to key players in the digital currency world, the location near Japan, the apparent lack of motive for suicide, the absence of witnesses...

Whoever stole those half a billion dollars would surely murder anyone who threatened to expose the crime, if he had occasion and means to do so.

[jbreher]

?!?!?!? In what way was Yantis' exploit 'similar to the MtGox fiasco'?

Exploing or duping is a process whereby an outsider hacks the game program into creating currency for the individual or duplicating an item and then selling it over and over which also results the creation of currency. Thes actions allow for the exploiter/duper to create an endless supply of currency without any real cost to that currency.

Has there ever been a demonstrated hack that allowed the hacker to 'create currency' or 'duplicate an item', where the currency or item was BTC?

[fatguyyyyy]

she killed herself because richard branson rebuffed her

[Raize]

Has there ever been a demonstrated hack that allowed the hacker to 'create currency' or 'duplicate an item', where the currency or item was BTC?

Yes, once in August 2010:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822.0

[jbreher]

Has there ever been a demonstrated hack that allowed the hacker to 'create currency' or 'duplicate an item', where the currency or item was BTC?

Yes, once in August 2010:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822.0

Touche'. Now what does this have to do with any exploit that Yantis might conceivably have used on MtGox?

[JorgeStolfi]

Has there ever been a demonstrated hack that allowed the hacker to 'create currency' or 'duplicate an item', where the currency or item was BTC?

Yes, once in August 2010:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822.0

Touche'. Now what does this have to do with any exploit that Yantis might conceivably have used on MtGox?

That 2010 bug was a trivial coding mistake.  If one issued a transaction request with two very large outputs, the sum would overflow the number of bits allocated for the total, yielding a negative value; and the software then would not realize that the total outputs exceeded (by a huge margin) the amount available in the address.   That bug was quickly fixed at the time, but required a rewind of the blockchain to remove the absurd transaction.

The bug that Mark blamed for the MtGOX loss was more complicated. The protocol itself was not broken, but allowed certain cosmetic changes to a trasaction request that would not invalidate its signature.  By manipulating those cosmetic details, the hacker could cause the MtGOX software to think that a client's withdrawal request did not go through, when in fact it had.  The software would then credit back the coins to the internal client account, and try to withdraw again.  This was possible only because the MtGOX software was carelessly coded and did not ignore changes in those those cosmetic details.

I do not think that this explanation makes sense.  Perhaps some hacker tried this attack, Mark noticed it, and  thought of blaming the entire loss on it, so that people would not look for the real cause.  Or perhaps he noticed the weak spot in the code, but, instead of fixing, it he decided to steal all the coins and then blame it on this bug.  Or someone else noticed the weak spot, and convinced or forced Mark to do that.

[jbreher]

Has there ever been a demonstrated hack that allowed the hacker to 'create currency' or 'duplicate an item', where the currency or item was BTC?

Yes, once in August 2010:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822.0

Touche'. Now what does this have to do with any exploit that Yantis might conceivably have used on MtGox?

That 2010 bug was a trivial coding mistake.  If one issued a transaction request with two very large outputs, the sum would overflow the number of bits allocated for the total, yielding a negative value; and the software then would not realize that the total outputs exceeded (by a huge margin) the amount available in the address.   That bug was quickly fixed at the time, but required a rewind of the blockchain to remove the absurd transaction.

The bug that Mark blamed for the MtGOX loss was more complicated. The protocol itself was not broken, but allowed certain cosmetic changes to a trasaction request that would not invalidate its signature.  By manipulating those cosmetic details, the hacker could cause the MtGOX software to think that a client's withdrawal request did not go through, when in fact it had.  The software would then credit back the coins to the internal client account, and try to withdraw again.  This was possible only because the MtGOX software was carelessly coded and did not ignore changes in those those cosmetic details.

I do not think that this explanation makes sense.  Perhaps some hacker tried this attack, Mark noticed it, and  thought of blaming the entire loss on it, so that people would not look for the real cause.  Or perhaps he noticed the weak spot in the code, but, instead of fixing, it he decided to steal all the coins and then blame it on this bug.  Or someone else noticed the weak spot, and convinced or forced Mark to do that.

Right.... So again, what does this have to do with Yantis? Are we agreed that this speculation about Yantis helping Pearce to steal all the Gox coins makes exactly zero sense?

[JorgeStolfi]

Right.... So again, what does this have to do with Yantis? Are we agreed that this speculation about Yantis helping Pearce to steal all the Gox coins makes exactly zero sense?

Well, at this point he is just one of the 7 billion suspects -- all equally likely, IMHO. 

[Raize]

Right.... So again, what does this have to do with Yantis? Are we agreed that this speculation about Yantis helping Pearce to steal all the Gox coins makes exactly zero sense?

I suppose it's still a possibility, but I wouldn't consider it likely. It is possible that a transaction malleability bug with Gox was used very slowly with small amounts and massive numbers of accounts over time in order to avoid drawing any attention until it was too late. This could have been done by any one of maybe a few hundred Bitcoiners over the course of 2011-2013. However, the technical skill to do this wouldn't have been possessed by many people, let alone the hardware, so that's why I say maybe "a few hundred". It might have even required collusion with a major mining pool to pull off efficiently, assuming Gox knew what they were doing and making sure their transactions had wide network exposure.

Unfortunately, because of a likely gag order, Mark is unable to confirm or deny any of this, even though the gag order probably has more to do with money-laundering than a Gox heist itself.

I think it's more likely that mismanagement of the site and the government seizure of Gox coin and funds had more to do with its collapse. Either that or someone stole some private keys and Mark's not giving out the details intentionally. Suffice to say, someone got screwed over somewhere, and for whatever reason, it's not being talked about.

Autumn's death might have just been a result of her having put a client's funds too heavily into Gox. Something like one of these. Was there a note or anything? I guess I never heard if there was a note. While it might seem "fun" to speculate on this stuff, keep in mind that she did have family and friends that aren't likely to want to talk about it, let alone hear people debate about it.