IT Drone by day degen newt by night. Crawling through the crypto landscape. Whats got me crawling today? nada clue me in
Joined July 2022
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Newt retweeted
The wildest part of Binance's $6.3 BILLION hack is the $44.6 million loan that worked exactly as intended.
On October 29, Binance suffered what will be crowned the biggest crypto hack in history. Tether froze more than $1.567 billion in USDT. Circle froze another $800 million in USDC. Binance says roughly $3 billion in affected assets has now been frozen. (as of writing this)
But while everyone was scrambling to stop the stolen money moving, one wallet linked to the attacker pulled off a big-brain move.
Deposited $60 million in stolen USDT into Aave, used it as collateral, and borrowed 19,762 wrapped ETH. Worth approximately $44.6 million at the time.
The borrowed ETH was then transferred to another attacker-linked wallet. He pulled off a Kayser Soze.
Tether can blacklist wallets holding USDT. But it can't blacklist the ETH that a DeFi protocol has already lent out.
Once that USDT is deposited into Aave's shared lending pool, freezing the attacker's wallet doesn't automatically freeze the underlying collateral.
The attacker effectively used a perfectly functioning DeFi lending protocol to get almost $45 million in ETH out against $60 million in stolen stablecoins.
Aave worked as it should, there were no broken smart contracts. The thing actually worked exactly as designed. The deposits and borrowing happened in roughly three minutes.
According to Bitquery's on-chain forensic thingamajig, SIX of the eleven wallets Tether blacklisted during the incident had already been emptied by the time the freezes landed. Dudes operating on a different timeline.
Aave hasn't necessarily lost $45 million. Its own risk team confirmed the loan remained overcollateralised, with around $59.9 million backing $43.8 million of outstanding debt at the time of its assessment. The position can still be liquidated under normal protocol rules. But you know how that works and so does he.
Aave then froze new deposits and borrowing across hundreds of its lending reserves as a precaution. But the bird had flown on the stolen ETH.
We don't yet know whether that ETH can ultimately be recovered, whether the attacker will ever repay the loan, or how the collateral will be dealt with.
What we do know is that an attacker used $60 million in stolen, centrally freezable assets to borrow nearly $45 million in an asset with no freeze switch.
We've built a financial system where one company can freeze billions of dollars, while another protocol can automatically lend out assets against stolen funds before anyone can even say 'CZ' 4 times.
Both systems can be working exactly as intended and it aint as simple as you'd think because freezing stolen crypto isn't as simple as blacklisting a wallet.
The blockchain doesn't automatically know the difference between money you've earned and money you've stolen.
Newt retweeted
if this is true binance got some 'splainin to do.
one engineer should be able to affect $6B, compromised or not.
need answers.
Binance's initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions. We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak. We will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.
The estimated total impact sits at around $6.3B. We have worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with ~$3 billion frozen on-chain so far.
Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company’s funds. User funds are safe. We will also publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the remediation is complete.
As an immediate precaution, Binance has:
- temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed;
- revoked the affected address authorisation;
- engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds.
Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly. We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice.
Please rely only on official Binance channels for updates. Please feel free to contact Binance Customer Support if you have any further questions.
binance.com/en/support/annou…
Newt retweeted
Binance's initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions. We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak. We will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.
The estimated total impact sits at around $6.3B. We have worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with ~$3 billion frozen on-chain so far.
Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company’s funds. User funds are safe. We will also publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the remediation is complete.
As an immediate precaution, Binance has:
- temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed;
- revoked the affected address authorisation;
- engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds.
Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly. We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice.
Please rely only on official Binance channels for updates. Please feel free to contact Binance Customer Support if you have any further questions.
binance.com/en/support/annou…
Amazing story
In the middle of World War Two, German soldiers in southeastern Poland started avoiding a cluster of villages.
They wouldn't go in. They wouldn't take people out for forced labor. They put up warning signs and stayed away.
They believed the area was infected with typhus.
It wasn't. Two doctors had invented the whole thing.
The man behind it was Eugene Lazowski, a young Polish doctor working for the Red Cross in the town of Rozwadów. He was watching the Nazi occupation tear his country apart. Executions. Deportations. People shipped off to labor camps, many never coming back.
He wanted to stop it. He had no weapons, no army, and no way to fight.
What he had was medicine.
His friend and fellow doctor, Stanisław Matulewicz, had discovered something strange. If you injected a person with a harmless, dead strain of a certain bacteria, their blood would test positive for typhus.
They wouldn't be sick at all. But on paper, they'd look like they had one of the most feared diseases of the war.
And the Germans were terrified of typhus. It spread fast, it killed, and it could tear through an army. When the Germans found it, they quarantined the area and kept their distance.
Lazowski realized what that meant. If he could make enough people look infected, the Germans would leave the whole region alone.
So he started injecting his patients.
He chose carefully. He sent the blood samples to German labs for testing, exactly as the rules required. The results came back positive. Again and again.
The Germans declared an epidemic zone. Villages were quarantined. Soldiers kept out. People who would have been seized for forced labor or worse were left alone, because nobody wanted to go near them.
Lazowski had to be careful. If too many cases looked fake, someone would ask why nobody was dying. So he spread out the injections over time and kept the outbreak believable.
Eventually the Germans did get suspicious. They sent a team of doctors to inspect.
Lazowski met them with food and vodka and played the gracious host. He guided them toward the sickest looking, dirtiest patients he could find, in the most crowded rooms. The German doctors, worried about catching typhus themselves, took a few samples and left in a hurry.
The tests came back positive.
The fake epidemic lasted until the end of the war. Estimates say it may have protected around 8,000 people.
Lazowski also secretly helped Jews from the nearby ghetto, giving them medical care at enormous risk.
After the war he moved to the United States and became a professor of pediatrics in Chicago. For decades he barely talked about what he'd done. Late in life he finally wrote a memoir. He called it My Private War.
He died in 2006.
He never fired a shot. He beat the Nazis with a needle and a lab test.
Newt retweeted
We released updated Microsoft 365 configuration baselines and ScubaGear v2.0.0, featuring direct REST API calls, automated Power BI coverage, and a new Security Suite baseline to streamline M365 security.🧑💻🔗 cisa.gov/resources-tools/ser…
ALT Image depicting an astronaut figure climbing a rope on the left against a blue digital background. The text on the right reads "SCuBA Microsoft 365 Secure Configuration Baselines Update Version 2.0" with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) logo in the bottom right corner.
Newt retweeted
GOP candidate for Senate Justin Murphy's response to a question about Iran. Booker almost wet his pants.
Beautiful
BREAKING: Federal agents searched Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar's home as part of a criminal investigation, AP sources say. apnews.com/article/ilhan-oma…
Newt retweeted
JUST IN: UP CLOSE VIDEO SHOWS HOW HACKERS STOLE OVER $80,000,000 SILENTLY CORRUPTING LEDGER #BITCOIN WALLETS
A SCAM SHOP IN MALAYSIA WAS LISTED AS AN "OFFICIAL AUTHORIZED RESELLER FOR YEARS"
BEHIND THE SCENES, CRIMINALS WERE INSERTING MICROSCOPIC SPY CHIPS ON EVERY WALLET
THEY REPACKAGED THE DEVICE AND SHIPPED IT TO UNSUSPECTING VICTIMS
ALL THE WHILE IT WAS SILENTLY CAPTURING THEIR PRIVATE KEYS
THIS IS WILD ‼️
Newt retweeted
Colleen Slemmer was lured into the woods and tortured for about 30 minutes. She was beaten, kicked, repeatedly cut with a box cutter (including her throat), had a pentagram carved into her chest while alive, and was killed when her skull was crushed with asphalt as she begged for her life.
Newt retweeted
JUST IN: Fort Hood shooter’s execution by firing squad will be livestreamed, Defense Department says. nbcnews.com/politics/trump-a…
Pay per view?
Public will be able to watch firing squad execution of Fort Hood attacker, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth says bbc.in/3TIHVvq
Newt retweeted
OCTOBER 7, 2023: SHE KNEW SHE WAS GOING TO DIE.
Libi Cohen-Meguri, a 22-year-old infantry officer, went to the Nova music festival.
She was shot while fleeing the party. At 8:11 a.m., she called her parents and said:
“I’ve been shot in the stomach, I’ve been shot in the arm, I’m losing blood. I’m going to die.”
Calmly, quietly, she understood; these were the last minutes of her life.
She asked her parents to call Tomer, her twin brother, and Maya, her little sister, and said:
“I’m going to die. I just want you to listen to me.
I love you, Yariv. You’re the best father I could have asked for.
Mom, stop screaming. Just listen to me. You are the best mother we could have ever had. Don’t forget to be a good mother to Tomer and Maya after I die.
Tomer, how lucky we were to live this life together. I love you.
My Maya, never forget—you are the treasure of my life.”
When she finished speaking, her parents told her to get out of the car, lie down on the road, and pretend to be dead.
With her last bit of strength, she got out of the car and laid down on the road.
“Mom, they’re coming to shoot me again,” Libi said after lying down.
While her mother listened on the phone, shouts in Arabic could be heard, and then a barrage of gunfire.
It didn’t stop.
It kept going, until the call was disconnected.
And that’s how Libi died—with demonic beasts from the pit of hell standing over her and emptying a full magazine into her body.
Libi died with LOVE on her lips: love for life, love for her family, and love for her people.
Her memory will forever be a blessing.
NEVER FORGET.
NEVER FORGIVE.
NEVER AGAIN IS NOW.
Israel is hunting down every single Palestinian and Hamas terrorist who participated in the October 7th Massacre—to kill them all.
They’re living on “borrowed time,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Sooner or later, every one of these monsters will be found and eliminated.
When do we go at her again?
US death row inmate Christa Pike "conscious and speaking" after failed execution attempt, her lawyers say
bbc.in/4yFY1oS
Newt retweeted
US death row inmate Christa Pike "conscious and speaking" after failed execution attempt, her lawyers say
bbc.in/4yFY1oS
Newt retweeted
If you're due to be executed I don't think there is supposed to be a "recovery" period.
Send in the closer
Newt retweeted
This is Vivian Silver.
She spent decades driving Palestinians from Gaza to the hospital, working tirelessly for peace. She spent a decade advocating for Gaza and raising awareness.
On October 7th Hamas burned her alive and the western left stood up and cheered.
