Blowing the lid off the CryptoNote/Bytecoin scam (with the exception of Monero)

[Liquid71]

proven the legit whitepaper was on the tor website

Show me third party verification of the signature and date from 2012 and I'll be impressed. Otherwise what is on the tor website is whatever the owner of that tor website wants it to be. Just more fake documents, in other words.

So you sticking to the claim their website wasn't hacked?

I came here becasue I saw cryptonote tweeted that their site was hacked and I thought that was a hillarious defense. Since it was proven in this thread that the whitepaper on the CN clearnet site was indeed a fraudulent copy of the one hosted on the tor site the most likely reason for that is it was hacked. Yet you're on here claiming that it wasn't hacked and it's a coin mill with a scorched earth policy towards Monero...it's Monero that has the scorched earth policy with any and everything cryptonote related. You're even shitting on bytecoin code despite the fact that your shitcoin clone is based on the same code, yet XMR is amazing. You're fucking desperate. If bytecoin is a scam which it still probably is, no need to shit on the code to defend your coin which is based on the same code you fucking simpleton

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[Liquid71]

I have carefully read this publication several times and, you know, I’ve got the impression that someone is trying hard to impose upon us his point of view. Someone wants us to think in a certain way.    
    
 I’ve tried to look at the whole situation as a bystander and posted below there are conclusions I’ve come to:  

1. It's obvious that someone is trying to discredit the CryptoNote technology along with all the CN-based coins.

CryptoNote team has published official statement yesterday https://cryptonote.org/news/archive

Greetings to all the members of the CryptoNote community and those who are interested in the technology. This message is our response to the recent developments and speculations within the CN community. Before we get to the point we’d like to reassert our firm commitment to the long-standing philosophy behind CryptoNote. Everything we do is for the sake of technology, and we take great joy as we progress towards our goal.

The initial efforts at CryptoNote development go back as far as 4 years. Some great minds were involved in its creation. More than two years ago the first implementations of CN technology were unleashed on the world of cryptocurrencies and from that moment forward the community that was forged around our vision and values grew exponentially.

What is currently going on within the CN community hardly resembles the harmonious state of mutual respect and synergy that once ruled over the CN coins. Someone clearly is instigating hostility. Moreover, the CryptoNote website has recently been exposed to illegal access by malicious users, which is absolutely unacceptable. Some data stored on cryptonote.org have been vandalized and is now temporary unavailable until the internal investigation is completed.

Having thoroughly reviewed the situation around certain CN currencies, the CryptoNote team would like to issue the following statement:

• It is the official position of CryptoNote that our technology has been created to bring positive changes into the current financial system by providing tools that have never existed before. The technology is what concerns us the most. We are not to be distracted or misled by the speculative rumors and strongly suggest you to follow suit.

• CryptoNote is not a cryptocurrency and has not been designed to be one. The only CryptoNote currency that the CryptoNote team officially endorses is CryptoNoteCoin, which has zero commercial value and serves educational purposes only.

• We consider all the name-calling and finger-pointing that has taken place on certain internet discussions as inappropriate and harmful to further development of the CryptoNote technology.
Over the years CryptoNote has had to overcome a great number of obstacles but those striving so desperately to deter the advance of new technologies are doomed to fail. We are strong believers in the power of innovation and there is no way to stop the CN development.
Discussion thread: https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=265&p=883#p883

Do you see this bold text? Think about it.

2. Someone tries to cause distrust and enmity between Monero and other CN-coins. "Divide et impera" is an old maxim.
 "with the exception of Monero" in the subject of this tread proves it better than everything else.

The question is: who is that "someone"? I have some thoughts on topic, but I don't want to publish them until I have enough evidence.

Seems to me that someone’s blowing his gaskets trying to smear the CN tech up and down.  Hexah deserves some credit on this one, even Monero has gotten its share of the shit pie here. Making it look like a pinnacle of the CN technology ready to take on Bitcoin is just outright ridiculous.

It all smells like the competition is playing out its tricky scheme on us. I don’t want to engage in the finger-pointing here (enough has been done so far) but isn’t it like Darkcoin hates us all. Those guys have never been particularly picky about their methods.
Shall we do some ass-kicking on their thread in retaliation?      

Well, Darkcoin hasn't been feeling good lately indeed. We know those guys are annoying with all the FUD in their topics. They surely have the incentive to discredit CryptoNote platform. But I'm not sure that they were capable of falsifying whitepaper on CryptoNote website.

Thinking more about it, I'd say that the biggest CryptoNote enemy is the government. Their philosophy is against the status quo. CryptoNote and Bytecoin is the very anonymous cryptocurrency out there. Ok, this is a bit over the roof, but if the whitepaper is replaced NSA, then I'm not surprised that Bytecoin developers are so anynomous. You just don't know what to expect.

Maybe CryptoNote will reveal the results of their investigations soon.

Maybe it’s an inside job or some kind of revenge attempt. There are so many possibilities for this type of behaviour, maybe in the end somebody is trying to earn some money crushing the exchange rate of all CN coins. While we’re talking somebody is making $$$

[cAPSLOCK]

Another "senior" member who needs to point out he only invested a little, or traded XMR and has no horse in the race but feels the need to point out what a scam Cryptonote is, despite the first post being proven to be false. How many of you guys are in on the XMR pump and dump? Must be big money riding on this...

There certainly is big money riding on this.

Fact of the matter is simple.  XMR folks would never have wanted to see this discovery.  It is a bad situation and casts a shadow on CN in general.  Just because Monero is, in many people's opinion, the best of the few clean, fair CN based coins doesnt mean having nearly the entire CN community called out for dishonesty does XMR any good.

It doesn't really, IMO.

But most of us who are invested in XMR would prefer light to darkness.  And light has been cast on this situation.  

You would have to be blind to see what recent developments like "Uh Oh, hacked!" really look like.

The dog ate my whitepaper. l0l

[fluffypony]

If bytecoin is a scam which it still probably is, no need to shit on the code to defend your coin which is based on the same code you fucking simpleton

rethink-your-strategy...is that you? :-P

Seriously, though, I don't think that engaging in a debate around this is a defence of Monero, it's just a debate.

[Liquid71]

CryptoNote team has published official statement yesterday https://cryptonote.org/news/archive

Moreover, the CryptoNote website has recently been exposed to illegal access by malicious users, which is absolutely unacceptable. Some data stored on cryptonote.org have been vandalized and is now temporary unavailable until the internal investigation is completed.

The "we got hacked" defense. Wow, that will totally work!

If not come up with a credible reason somebody would create a fraudulent whitepaper for the clearnet cryptonote website. I seriously would like to hear one, I can't think of one. I thought the "we were hacked" defense was bs too, but how else do you explain somebody going through the trouble of creating a fake whitepaper?

[lordoliver]

...
I didn't read
...

You should try it out sometime.

Why? Did I miss something important skimming?

no. reading is overestimated. Just wait for the movie...

[smooth]

proven the legit whitepaper was on the tor website

Show me third party verification of the signature and date from 2012 and I'll be impressed. Otherwise what is on the tor website is whatever the owner of that tor website wants it to be. Just more fake documents, in other words.

So you sticking to the claim their website wasn't hacked?

I said I don't believe that "explanation" for the faked whitepapers. The conveniently timed, "We got hacked!" defense is just not credible to me.

I have no proof whether their site was hacked or not hacked or if so who did it.

I came here becasue I saw cryptonote tweeted that their site was hacked and I thought that was a hillarious defense.

That's because it is.

Since it was proven in this thread that the whitepaper on the CN clearnet site was indeed a fraudulent copy of the one hosted on the tor

I'm going to say this again because you apparently didn't get it the first time. Nothing is "proven" by a tor web site. The owner of the tor web site can put whatever they wan't on it. Unless there is verifiability through an independent third party (at the least; multiple independent sources of credible corroboratory evidence would be better), it can prove nothing, and in fact proves nothing.

site the most likely reason for that is it was hacked. Yet you're on here claiming that it wasn't hacked and it's a coin mill with a scorched earth policy towards Monero...it's Monero that has the scorched earth policy with any and everything cryptonote related. You're even shitting on bytecoin code despite the fact that your shitcoin clone is based on the same code, yet XMR is amazing.

You are confused. I never said anything was bad about the Bytecode code. My comments are directed at the scam artists behind the fraudulent 80% premine, fake documents, multiple coins operated by the same crew hidden behind multiple anonymous "developers" names, etc., not the code.

[smooth]

CryptoNote team has published official statement yesterday https://cryptonote.org/news/archive

Moreover, the CryptoNote website has recently been exposed to illegal access by malicious users, which is absolutely unacceptable. Some data stored on cryptonote.org have been vandalized and is now temporary unavailable until the internal investigation is completed.

The "we got hacked" defense. Wow, that will totally work!

If not come up with a credible reason somebody would create a fraudulent whitepaper for the clearnet cryptonote website.

Then you are pretty slow. The motivation is obvious.

I seriously would like to hear one, I can't think of one. I thought the "we were hacked" defense was bs too, but how else do you explain somebody going through the trouble of creating a fake whitepaper?

It was explained by the OP. Go read it.

Nothing posted since has added significantly to the original findings, nor detracted from them. It is all unverifiable and most likely fabricated. If not, then I ask them again to produce verifiable dated signatures, credible independent third party sources, or other such evidence. They likely can't and won't, and this has been my view, vocally, since several months back on the BCN thread before XMR even existed. This has nothing to do with XMR and your attempt to paint is as some sort of XMR strategy is mistaken and pointless.

The original findings are and the inferred motivation behind them are still the most credible explanation in my view.

[Hexah]

But CryptoNote guys didn't say CN website was HACKED.

[smooth]

But CryptoNote guys didn't say CN website was HACKED.

Wow, this is getting surreal

[psterryl]

But CryptoNote guys didn't say CN website was HACKED.

I like how you conveniently ignore the fact that it was pointed out, on the previous page, that your account was registered less than 4 minutes after someone who you just happened to be agreeing with. Way back in January too, what are the chances?

Not really doing your credibility in this thread any favours if I'm honest with you.

I thought about that... And I agree with @Cheesus

Why does this not surprise me? Let me think....hmm. Umm.

Oh yeah, that's right! Because you are both BCN shills?

[dga]

Maybe it’s an inside job or some kind of revenge attempt. There are so many possibilities for this type of behaviour, maybe in the end somebody is trying to earn some money crushing the exchange rate of all CN coins. While we’re talking somebody is making $$$

Let me explain what really happened.

And since I engaged with most of you guys (as in exact same shill crew that has showed up here now -- you know who you are) early on in the BCN thread about the 80% hidden premine, etc., and nearly all of what I wrote turned out to be exactly correct, you might want to pay attention. You guys tried this "there are so many possibilities" line back then. It was silly and bogus back then and it is silly and bogus now.

The cryptonote site did not get hacked. They swapped out the paper because this lame "We got hacked!" defense was the best the coin mill crew behind BCN/Cryptonote/BMR/QCN/FCN/etc. could come up with to futilely try to explain away being exposed as frauds and scammers.

Open your eyes man.

You're delusional, the proof you Monero pump and dumpers came up with is a fraudulent whitepaper and when it's proven the legit whitepaper was on the tor website proving the clearnet Cryptonote site was probably hacked, you also claim proof it's a scam.
Get real dude, nobody takes you guys serious because you are so desperate. Monero trolls likely behind this whole mess, makes more sense than Cryptonote making a fraudulent paper to expose..who exactly?

you offer nothing, just run around screaming scam. Dude we get it you're a huge bagholder of monero and want to see every other coin fail. Offer something up besides The would have had to swap out the whitepapers prior to this thread, so what exactly does the "we got hacked" claim defend them against..prior to this lame hatchet job by a Monero insider?
Bytecoin probably is a scam but I'm not investing in Monero, you're a bunch of desperate assclowns out to make a quick buck and care nothing about crypto dumping your clone shitcoin and waiting for cryptonote 2.0 coins.

Now that your "fraudulent whitepaper" scam to pump and dump your monero bags has just about run it's course it's time for me to dump your clone shitcoin and wait for a cryptonote 2.0 coin

I have no horses in the XMR race (but I do hold some BBR), but let me say that independent of the OP -- and with a little less venom and swearing -- it was very clear from the code that the bytecoin premine was fake.  Nothing to do with the whitepaper, and you can find the obsfucated and slowed-down code in the git history of XMR and Bytecoin.

I have no comment about the other coins, and personally believe both that the XMR dev team is reasonably clean and that BBR was a good-faith effort to create something non-scammy, but I don't have a technical basis for that conclusion.

I don't want you to buy any coin (and I'd never advise anyone to put money on cryptocurrencies unless they want to gamble).  But I do believe it's worthwhile suggesting to people somewhat emphatically that they stay the heck away from BCN and tread carefully with some of the clones that just copy-pasted that code, as much as they should be careful with any alt that just copy-pastes the Bitcoin code and tweaks a few parameters.  Most are at best worthless and at worst outright scams.  The thing that adds potential value to a coin that's not actively used is its development, community (consider dogecoin as an example of the latter, and both BBR and XMR as examples of the former), and in some cases, its underlying technical innovations (cryptonote broadly speaking).

And before you fling accusations, I'm quite sure I'm not a sock puppet:  http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/crypto/not_a_sock_puppet.html

[Hexah]

But CryptoNote guys didn't say CN website was HACKED.

Wow, this is getting surreal

Exposed to illegal access ≠ hacked. But you like to define everything as you wish.

[yAmAdA]

Look at this. I checked the snapshots of CSS files RethinkYourStrategy posted here and this is what I found. It don’t match. I checked every web page myself and the CSS code from his snapshots is different from the reality. Since I found this I don’t trust his research anymore. Every single thing that he claims must be doublechecked.  

Obviously, the CSS has been changed to no longer reflect the original findings. There is no reason such a change would not be made.

Checking website contents or adding new website as proof for something, in such a way that it cannot be verified with archive.org, after the time of this reveal does not prove anything, because websites are easily created, modified and timestamps are trivial to falsify.

As we are all here for the purpose of reasonable discourse, I hope for your understanding and hope that no more of this type of unreliable evidence is posted.

[Este Nuno]

Wow.

As an impartial observer let me just say one thing:

You CN/Bytecoin whoever the fuck you are posters coming out of the woodwork like this is incredibly transparent.

Just stop. You're doing more harm to yourselves then good.

I own no CryptoNote coins whatsoever at the moment. I've traded some BBR and XMR on short time frames , trying to get in and out in time when they bubble.

Also,

Lukejr, if you're reading this. Do you really think it's possible for Bitcoin to integrate ring signatures? I assumed this was impossible.

Does anyone know if it's possbile to do such a thing? This is exciting news if it's plausable. My current view is that it's probably "possible" but completely unfeasable for a Bitcoin based technology to under go such a change.

Wow you should probably read the whole thread rather than the first post..

Another "senior" member who needs to point out he only invested a little, or traded XMR and has no horse in the race but feels the need to point out what a scam Cryptonote is, despite the first post being proven to be false. How many of you guys are in on the XMR pump and dump? Must be big money riding on this...

I've read the whole thread and posted quite a few times through out it. I have absolutely no involvement with Monero. I wrote that in the interest of full disclosure.

It's honestly obvious what's happening here to anyone who goes through it. Does anyone in the world who's not involved with CN/Bytecoin really believe that Bytecoin came out two years ago? lol...

It's just one of those things that are so ridiculous that I have to point them out. Because your insulting the intelligence of every single person who reads this post.

I have no idea about whatever CN variant being made by the same people as BCN. Or whether or not crypto_zoidberg is really from the CN team. And I don't really care about those things very much to be honest. But the fact that there's a concerted effort to attempt to convince people that Bytecoin "came out on the deep web 2 years ago" is laughable.

[Este Nuno]

Another "senior" member who needs to point out he only invested a little, or traded XMR and has no horse in the race but feels the need to point out what a scam Cryptonote is, despite the first post being proven to be false. How many of you guys are in on the XMR pump and dump? Must be big money riding on this...

There certainly is big money riding on this.

Fact of the matter is simple.  XMR folks would never have wanted to see this discovery.  It is a bad situation and casts a shadow on CN in general.  Just because Monero is, in many people's opinion, the best of the few clean, fair CN based coins doesnt mean having nearly the entire CN community called out for dishonesty does XMR any good.

It doesn't really, IMO.

But most of us who are invested in XMR would prefer light to darkness.  And light has been cast on this situation. 

You would have to be blind to see what recent developments like "Uh Oh, hacked!" really look like.

The dog ate my whitepaper. l0l

Yes, the fact that there is so much shadiness behind CN is a huge negative for XMR. Despite the fact that they've taken it in their own direction, there is still the risk of backdoors in the code.

If CN were real people with real names connected to real jobs and universities, this risk would be much lower. But all we have now is obvious lies and pseudonyms.

Monero now has the additonal burden of convincing the public that they've made sure that all of the code is clean. It's not a win for Monero.

Judging by volume on Poloniex, none of these coins are even a remote threat anway. So other CN coins being damaged really has very little effect on Monero. The net result for them here is negative.

[mmortal03]

I think that something has to be explained to all of us. Has XMR team/supporters/whales anyhow influenced
the situation around the whitepaper or were they just in the right place to spot the vandalization and take it as a fact to discredit the whole technology?

How are XMR supporters discrediting the "whole technology"? I don't think anyone here has legitimately questioned the CryptoNote technology itself.

[mmortal03]

Monero now has the additonal burden of convincing the public that they've made sure that all of the code is clean. It's not a win for Monero.

Which they've being doing by having at least one independent individual review the code. More should, of course.

[dga]

Monero now has the additonal burden of convincing the public that they've made sure that all of the code is clean. It's not a win for Monero.

Which they've being doing by having at least one independent individual review the code. More should, of course.

Here's one for you:

The XMR p2p protocol includes a set of debug commands that can only be invoked by a peer that has the right secret key, defined in cryptonote_config.h:

Code:

#define P2P_STAT_TRUSTED_PUB_KEY                        "8f80f9a5a434a9f1510d13336228debfee9c918ce505efe225d8c94d045fa115"

The observant will note that this is unchanged from that in Bytecoin:

https://github.com/amjuarez/bytecoin/blob/master/src/cryptonote_config.h#L107

Boolberry changed it (it's now called P2P_MAINTAINERS_KEY), so at least with that one, one can be sure that only Zoidberg can execute the debug commands.

Tacotime noted it some time ago, but noted that he "hadn't looked in to it extensively."

If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I'd note that the person with the P2P_STAT key -- aka the Bytecoin crew -- can use this to map the network, determine the OS and version of every node playing, and they're even called out in the source as:

Code:

#ifdef ALLOW_DEBUG_COMMANDS
  //These commands are considered as insecure, and made in debug purposes for a limited lifetime. 

Is this malice?  No, it's probably what happens when you adopt an unfamiliar codebase and have to coordinate people to get through it all, but it's pretty strongly suggested in the code itself that it's not something you necessarily want to leave enabled **when you can't even use it yourself to debug** because it's someone else's private key.

It'd be interesting to know which, if any, of the other cryptonote clones did change or disable the P2P debug key or commands...

Ah, here we go:

Code:

Bytecoin:           8f80f9a5a434a9f1510d13336228debfee9c918ce505efe225d8c94d045fa115
Monero:             8f80f9a5a434a9f1510d13336228debfee9c918ce505efe225d8c94d045fa115
Boolberry:          d2f6bc35dc4e4a43235ae12620df4612df590c6e1df0a18a55c5e12d81502aa7
Quazarcoin:         fede02571de64623093f19e08a3b791e0ffe4d39d968c7cdc51cb8d37e6a2a0d
Ducknote:           85ae8734f90bc1ee295ceb0ec05a49852d4dbbc9d1c27a619b5f4bdf26a0196e

As always, though, if this was intentional or suggestive of collusion with Bytecoin, it was probably intentional on the part of TFT, not the current Monero devs.

[fluffypony]

-snip-

They can't - we audited that quite some time ago when we noticed that. I've been playing with it via connectivity_tool for a couple of months, which is where it's most referenced. As we continue to diverge from the reference code this will be removed, but it's not terribly urgent at this juncture.

Enumerating the network is a trivial exercise, as it is with Bitcoin. This will change in future with the integration of i2p.