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- Hacker News
- He was smart/determined enough to risk it all. Why didn't he just try find a job that pays $200k/year ? Why play into the stereotypes ?by zuzululu
- being smart and using btc are mutually exclusive
- > didn't he just try find a job that pays $200k/year ?
you really think it's that easy?
by r_lee - It is honestly much easier to spread malware or hack companies than it is to make 200k/year from a company.
Now with AI, you can accelerate this so much. The only thing holding back thousands of new threat actors from doing the same is Opsec, its hard.
by HDBaseT - Yeah, clearly risking it all wasn't the smart play here, as evidenced by the fact he got caught.
A lot of people are willing to tolerate risk, that hardly makes them useful. Frequently the opposite.
by idiotsecant - job market is insane today. its hard to find a job in retail in some places, software is way more competitive. retraining to some in demand trade takes money you might not have and its still not guaranteed success. and even if you get hired for a stable job theres no guarantee your company will let you work your way up to 200k when they know you cant afford to quit.
the uncertainty of crime is better than endless waiting for an offer that might never come. if you take 10 scammers or drug dealers one of them will get rich, 3 will go to prison and the rest have a relatively normal life. that might be genuinely better odds than a mainstream career for some.
by tancop - > He was smart/determined enough to risk it all.
Desperate people are willing to risk it all, and usually smart people aren't desperate.
by fhdkweig - >Why didn't he just try find a job that pays $200k/year ?
Probably was not able to get into MIT or another prestigious school that many of those companies look for on a resume.
by robotnikman - Criminals should have used Monero.
Victims should have not keep crypto on desktops. They are much less secure than Mobile.
by Cider9986 - > Victims should have not keep crypto on desktops. They are much less secure than Mobile.
Unless it's Qubes OS.
by fsflover - Modern macOS devices have a secure element just as good as iOS devices. Almost nobody makes use of it, though.
(I haven't seen anything yet that uses the secure element to control access to a wallet. Are there any technical obstacles to keeping the keys out of main memory?)
by LoganDark - I heard Monero can help against blockchain analysis (though less so if you buy from adversaries). Unfortunately it looks like blockchain analysis was not the attack vector here, but rather buying gift cards through an incompetent intermediary.by LoganDark
- Not really an "incompetent intermediary", Bitrefill, the company used for buying gift cards with Bitcoin received legal requests to identify the user. Bitrefill doesn't proclaim insane privacy protections, they are based out of Sweden but aren't immune to being requested to provide the information.
Monero could of helped, although its not easy to transfer BTC to Monero without P2P trades, as effectively every exchange requires KYC. Those source and destination wallet addresses are tainted, you wouldn't be able to deposit on any mainstream exchange and if they do, its for a honey pot purpose.
by HDBaseT - This underscores a major issue with commercial software like Steam and games obtained therein. You cannot trust that software not to maliciously scan your device for secrets such as crypto wallets or other information. Ideally, you want to run apps like Steam, Discord, Zoom and whatever else does not come from a trusted distribution repo as a separate user. This is not always convenient however, and the compromise I adopted on my gaming PC is to bubblewrap Steam. Do not mount things like /home and devices games should not be using in the sandbox.by drnick1
- flatpak is the most convenient way to securely run steam on linux
- Android solves this problem by making it impossible for an app to access the storage of another app. No matter how much the Steam app wants to see your crypto wallet's key it is not possible (assuming no Linux exploit).by charcircuit
- This is what my Steam Deck is for. There's no gap like air gap.by kibwen
- In theory you could change the steam command line fpr each game and have them launch in bubblewrap. Though I'm not sure how well that would play with graphics drivers. It might be friendly with AMD, but my experience is that NVIDIA is a pain to have play nice with containers.by techjamie
- Agreed. I’ve always disliked having anything to do with gaming on my primary OS, always choosing to compartmentalize that stuff away from anything sensitive. The only exception is DRM free standalone games like Factorio, which has pretty safe mods compared to something like Minecraft.by wps