Ottawa Bitcoin exchange defrauded of $100,000 in cyber currency

Re:Ottawa Bitcoin exchange defrauded of $100,000 in cyber cu... by onion2k on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @10:47AM (#7422215)

Keeping 194 BTC in a hot wallet on your server is essentially the same as trusting $100,000 in cash to the minimum wage security guard at your bank. You'd certainly hope that the bank has procedures that he's going to follow correctly, but $100,000 is a lot to risk so perhaps a little extra security would be a good idea.

Mind you, you'd also rightly expect the bank to cover the loss if the guard just hands it over to a stranger.

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Re:Ottawa Bitcoin exchange defrauded of $100,000 in cyber cu... by shawabawa3 on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @11:36AM (#7422538)

I don't know the size of the exchange, but it's reasonable that they would have enough bitcoins in the hot wallet to process withdrawals on an "unlucky" day - that is a day where significantly more people withdraw than deposit. That could easily be 150BTC for even a small exchange. (the article says 150 were stolen, not 194)

considering going up a level in security basically means hosting your own servers, it's probably worth the risk as long as you assume your hosting provider doesn't give strangers root access to your box

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