On November 21, the Cardano blockchain suffered a major chainsplit after someone created a transaction that exploited an old bug in Cardano node software, causing the chain to split. The person who submitted the transaction fessed up on Twitter, writing, "It started off as a 'let's see if I can reproduce the bad transaction' personal challenge and then I was dumb enough to rely on AI's instructions on how to block all traffic in/out of my Linux server without properly testing it on testnet first, and then watched in horror as the last block time on explorers froze."Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, responded with a tweet boasting about how quickly the chain recovered from the catastrophic split, then accused the person of acting maliciously. "It was absolutely personal", Hoskinson wrote, adding that the person's public version of events was merely him "trying to walk it back because he knows the FBI is already involved". Hoskinson added, "There was a premeditated attack from a disgruntled [single pool operator] who spent months in the Fake Fred discord actively looking at ways to harm the brand and reputation of IOG. He targeted my personal pool and it resulted in disruption of the entire cardano network."Hoskinson's decision to involve the FBI horrified some onlookers, including one other engineer at the company who publicly quit after the incident. They wrote, "I've fucked up pen testing in a major way once. I've seen my colleagues do the same. I didn't realize there was a risk of getting raided by the authorities because of that + saying mean things on the Internet."

“I know! I’ll use one bogus technology to test another bogus technology! What could possibly go wrong?”

  • Sal@lemmy.world
    8·
    3 hours ago

    Bro MADE the mistake himsef and called the FEDS on a dude that was like “hey this is your fault”???

    Bro. Rich people REALLY don’t like being told they did something wrong and refuse to take any personal accountability for their bullshit.

      • Sal@lemmy.world
        2·
        44 minutes ago

        Yeah, no, being mentally ill doesn’t make you a piece of shit, and that’s essentially implying that they are not at fault for trying to avoid any and all personal accountability. They’re just greedy, evil jerks.

        • ZDL@lazysoci.alOP
          1·
          32 minutes ago

          Some forms of mental illness, however, are, quite literally, “just an asshole”.

          Pathological narcissism would qualify for this, for example.

    • ZDL@lazysoci.alOP
      2·
      29 minutes ago

      Someone used blockchain (a solution in search of a problem that’s bugged to the hilt). Someone else used LLMbecile coding (another solution in search of a problem that’s bugged to the hilt) to test the first person’s blockchain. The LLMbecile made code that broke the blockchain because it was bugged to the hilt (where “it” can apply equally to the LLMbecile and to the blockchain). The first person called the FBI on the second.

    • Gravitywell.xYz@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      41 minutes ago

      Someone discovered an exploit on cardano (a blockchain) that allowed for a “bad” transaction (think spending the same coin twice, or rejecting a transaction that was already valid).

      This got some discussion but an actual fix wasnt the priority. Someone else decided to try and see if they could intentionally create a similar bad transaction.

      There is a dedicated test chain which is specifically for those kind of tests but instead of choosing to do the bad transaction on the test chain, the person thought they would just block all internet traffic on their computer, but instead of doing that correctly by unplugging their ethernet cable or turning off the wifi, asked chat GPT how to block traffic ans chatGPT guessed wrong.

      … Its a pretty weak excuse IMO. It doesnt sound like the exploit was vibe coded, just that the person trusted instructions about blocking connections from GPT. Like if this was a professional they would be fired immediately for such incompetence, but it sounds like it was not a professional.

      Ultimately the problem is that they made the choice to use the main blockchain instead of the test one, that makes their defense of it being an accident a bit weak.

    • grue@lemmy.world
      10·
      4 hours ago

      I’m no expert, but here’s my guess:

      Somebody dun goofed and now there’s two sets of conflicting records for that cryptocurrency where there’s supposed to only be one. Either there’s two different currencies confusingly with the same name now, or a whole bunch of transactions are invalid and nobody knows or is capable of authoritatively declaring which, let alone unwinding them.

      I assume it’d be pretty catastrophic, if it weren’t for crypto being fake monopoly money to begin with.