
To the DAO and the Ethereum community: Fuck you - randomname2
http://trilema.com/2016/to-the-dao-and-the-ethereum-community-fuck-you/
======
SkyMarshal
Amusingly, Gun Sirer and others anticipated this just yesterday:

[http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/17/thoughts-on-the-
dao...](http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/17/thoughts-on-the-dao-hack/)

 _" What's a Hack When You Don't Have a Spec?

First of all, I'm not even sure that this qualifies as a hack. To label
something as a hack or a bug or unwanted behavior, we need to have a
specification of the wanted behavior.

We had no such specification for The DAO. There is no independent
specification for what The DAO is supposed to implement. Heck, there are
hardly any comments in The DAO code that document what the developers may have
been thinking at the time they wrote the code.

The "code was its own documentation," as people say. It was its own fine
print. The hacker read the fine print better than most, better than the
developers themselves.

Had the attacker lost money by mistake, I am sure the devs would have had no
difficulty appropriating his funds and saying "this is what happens in the
brave new world of programmatic money flows." When he instead emptied out
coins from The DAO, the only consistent response is to call it a job well
done._"

------
runn1ng
Note that this is just a repost, by Mirca Popescu - _very_ controversial
bitcoiner.

He famously wrote "The woman's job is to find a great man (not good, by the
way), suck his cock, wash his socks and write his eulogy." and other articles,
glorifying rape and tying it back to Bitcoin.

edit: oh here it is

> The available stategies open before you are quite the same as the raped
> woman has historically encountered : either learn to love your rapist and
> make him an excellent wife - or else die, beaten black and blue.

> You are the raped woman. Get used to it, because this Bitcock ain't gonna
> suck itself.

What a lovely libertarian

edit2: but he finances OpenBSD. So he can't be _all_ bad.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/20/openbsd_bailed_out/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/20/openbsd_bailed_out/)

~~~
powera
I disagree the view that somebody that advocates wife beating and rape should
be considered a not-all-bad part of the community because "he finances
OpenBSD".

~~~
to3m
This is called "British humour".

What runn1ng is saying there is that the guy's a shitheel.

------
tdaltonc
Smarter people then I have said that this message is not validly signed:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4oo1io/an_open_le...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4oo1io/an_open_letter_from_the_hacker/)

Though the view it expresses (but not the legal gibberish) is still though
provoking.

------
mrkgnao
As unlikely as it may be (I believe real lawyers will quickly come along and
tell us _how_ unlikely), we may actually be seeing $ATTACKER legally assert
his claim to the money, and the whole thing "come through", so to speak.

Edit: The author seems like a very, very disturbing individual. Does anyone on
HN have a bit of a back story on this person?

~~~
21
He is pretty famous in the Bitcoin community.

He donated $20K to save OpenBSD, so he certainly has money for lawyers -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7087800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7087800)

He also is not scared easily, here is he refusing a SEC request of
questionable jurisdiction - [http://trilema.com/2014/interacting-with-fiat-
institutions-a...](http://trilema.com/2014/interacting-with-fiat-institutions-
a-guide/)

------
crazypyro
What happens when a judge interprets the spirit of the T&C and not the letter?
Is that something that a judge has the right to do?

I understand that this would most likely kill "smart contracts" (since they
can just be overridden by existing legal systems...), but wouldn't it be a
possible path to reclaiming the assets?

~~~
yaur
If smart contracts are dead are there any assets to reclaim?

~~~
crazypyro
Fair point. I think the legal situation is much more complex than the "The
Attacker" is trying to portray it though.

------
gus_massa
Previous discussion (other URL)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927891)
(227 points, 6 hours ago, 96 comments)

I'll copy a comment by verroq
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11928645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11928645)
(but there are a few similar comments there)

> _This letter is fake. Signatures do not match. Flag and move on._

>
> _.[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4oo1io/an_open_le...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4oo1io/an_open_letter_from_the_hacker/d4e7efq)
> ._

------
nisa
I feel like I'm on the only one that is out of the loop on this DAO hack:

Could someone provide some context? Who is the author? Is he the attacker?
What does the Keccack hash prove? Does Ethereum even use Keccak? Or is this
just some troll posting?

------
jraines
I don't understand the gnashing of teeth around solving this with a soft fork
then hard fork. Is that not just as built into the overall system as any flaw
is built into a smart contract?

The code decides. But the community decides on the code.

Imagine a hypothetical anonymous coin that completely won over the narcotics
trade. It achieved all its goals such that no government could trace it or
freeze assets. But one day a supplier accrued a huge mass of coins by selling
rat poison. Why shouldn't even fervent believers in the system ignore protests
of "tyranny! the Fed!" if the overall narcocoin community forked his coins to
worthlessness?

------
vessenes
This is not an argument that will win in court, the actions are not equitable.
And, it is probably still criminal even if you win your civil suit. It's all
just posturing in my opinion, someone made their money shorting ether and is
just messing around right now.

~~~
drinchev
Let me give you another point.

Let's say you are playing a game and at one point you win several million
virtual coins out of that game.

The creators of the game claim that you have used a cheat and you respectfully
give them back a reference that states : "cheats are allowed, because the game
is bug free anyway".

The virtual coins you won at that game have actually zero value in the real
world, only in some virtual communities where people seems to trade them.

If let's say the jurisdiction of that case is in Switzerland ( where the
company game-creator is based ) and a judge should make a decision ...

You are telling me, that under any circumstances, being absolutely sure the
judge will say that this is a crime and that this was a "cheat" so you should
return back all the virtual coins? Not so sure.

~~~
stult
There was a similar case a few years ago, where a guy made off with hundreds
of thousands of dollars by exploiting a bug in a video poker machine. The
casinos sued him, claiming the money was fraudulently obtained. His lawyer
claimed he had won by entering a combination of buttons that he was legally
entitled to enter and so there was no fraud. The court agreed and the guy won
his court case.

Here, whether a court decides that his ether coins were fraudulently obtained
is going to depend on how the court interprets the contract in question. These
ethereum contracts are supposed to be fully integrated (meaning all of the
contract terms are contained therein and no outside terms can be introduced).
Since the attacker's actions were explicitly authorized by the contract (since
the contract __is __the code), then it 's entirely possible a court will find
that it wasn't fraud. The really key question is whether the contract is
integrated, which is basically the central contract law concept behind ether
in the first place.

However, I suspect a court would not be friendly toward the idea of
eliminating dispute resolution. Especially an American court. It militates
against many of the core common law and constitutional principles of American
jurisprudence.

I expect that a court will rule that the contract is void because of
unilateral mistake. When one party misunderstands the terms of a contract, and
the other party is aware of this and exploits it, the court will generally
grant rescission (cancelling the contract and putting the parties back in the
position they were before the contract, e.g. by transferring the ether coins
back to their former owners) or reformation (rewriting the contract terms to
reflect what the mistaken party thought they were).

One can argue that the point of ether is to eliminate mistake and similar
doctrines that account for human fallibility, but the court will probably say
that you can't contract away a doctrine about contract formation itself.
Anyway, it would be a super interesting law suit, and definitely would
challenge many of ether's most important legal implications.

------
frankfrazetta
Not again .. Y combinator was super helpful when I got goxxed and now it's
back to the same epic fail thread. Let's see what happens after brexit
election.

------
powera
IANAL but I expect that anyone admitting to this will find themselves in jail
very quickly, at least in the US. The legal system isn't fond of $50 million
cons based on one paragraph of legalese.

~~~
masklinn
Unless the attacker is an author of DAO or Ethereum I fail to see where the
con would be.

~~~
powera
It is clearly theft and whatever legal mumbo jumbo he provides doesn't change
that. I'd personally say the claims that this is somehow legal is the con, but
I agree it's not entirely clear.

~~~
jsprogrammer
If a valid contract was entered and accepted, where is the clear theft?

Supposedly DAO has the ability to cancel the transaction anyway. Failing to
cancel will be additional _de facto_ evidence of the validity of the contract.

~~~
powera
You're begging the question here. He's trying to use spurious legal claims to
prevent cancelling the transaction. His success at that can't make his legal
claims valid.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Who is the "he" you are referring to?

~~~
powera
The attacker. Who can't say that it's illegal to block his money, and use the
lack of blocking as an argument in a court of law.

------
frankfrazetta
Nothing to see here people - move along .. Leave crypto because your only
interested in the price.

------
Artlav
The real question now is, for most folk - sell the ether, buy more ether while
it's cheap, or do nothing?

------
lumberjack
To me it sounds like the attacker just hates the idea of ethereum for some
reason.

~~~
rspeer
Sounds to me like he _loves_ the idea of Ethereum, which is shoddily written
contracts that automatically enforce themselves and are capable of paying out
large amounts of virtual currency to clever people.

He just hates the community saying "We were just kidding about the self-
enforcing part".

(Disclaimer: I do not actually approve of Ethereum, nor the author's views,
but they have momentarily conspired to make interesting and entertaining
things happen.)

------
edoceo
If the writer is confident in their legal team why do they remain unnamed?

