Author Topic: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!  (Read 5359 times)

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Offline fav

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Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #12 on: November 27, 2013, 09:59:12 am »

Offline raspu

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Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #11 on: November 27, 2013, 07:49:58 am »
I went to bit-u.com to log into my account and instead found this message:

"We have some sort of big issue. Please refrain from depositing to your address. Hopefully this will get sorted out soon. I have to take the site down while I contact my partners."

No one seems to know what is really going on and Silfax isn't responding.  Silfax needs to inform his customers of the situation.  Many of us had substantial amounts of money on his exchange and are concerned about OUR MONEY!

It looks like he ran off with all his customers' money.  He had to have at least 100k USD on his exchange.  I had over 106 pts on his exchange.

Silfax was on the forum tonight at 7:12 PM.  If he doesn't respond to anyone and tell us what happened to our money, I am requesting that Bytemaster, Stan, Bo Shen or someone at Invictus Innovations provide us with the IP logs for Silfax's connections to the forum.

He also has disappeared from the #protoshares channel on IRC.

You are flooding the forum with this issue, I know a lot of people lost money with this, and that you are really angry, but there's a place for this kind of posts, and I think this thread isn't .
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Offline bitshirehashaway

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Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #10 on: November 26, 2013, 08:22:39 pm »
If the answer is a VPS then that is a strike against the service.

If the answer is a VPS then IT SHOULD NOT BE USED AT ALL.

How many times has a thief used the "VPS hack" excuse to steal their customers' money.

Almost never probably.

Offline TwoKoolFourSkewl

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Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #9 on: November 25, 2013, 02:00:43 am »
If the answer is a VPS then that is a strike against the service.

If the answer is a VPS then IT SHOULD NOT BE USED AT ALL.

How many times has a thief used the "VPS hack" excuse to steal their customers' money.
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Offline alexkravets

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Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #8 on: November 24, 2013, 07:48:05 pm »
+10


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Offline bytemaster

Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #7 on: November 24, 2013, 06:32:46 pm »
Apparently the PTS is safe, but the BTC is gone.

I do not believe it was malice because someone I have reason to trust knows him and endorsed him.   

I think there needs to be a standard security checklist / risk profile that any exchange must pass and the results of the test should be made public so people understand the risks.

For example: 
1) Where are the funds stored?   If the answer is a VPS then that is a strike against the service.
2) Are the funds encrypted?
3) Are there backups of the wallet?
4) Are the funds stored on the same machine as the website?
5) If it is an 'alpha site' all transfers should be manually approved because a bug in the code could drain the wallet.
6) The Live wallet should be limited to 5% of funds deposited.

A lot of these things can be a real pain to set up, but if you are using a service to trade money you cannot afford to lose, then this needs to be taken care of.  There are probably additional security checks that could be added.


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Offline alexkravets

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Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2013, 04:21:22 pm »
It could be a hack not a theft by owner, so legitimacy is not the only issue, another one is competence


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Offline bobb

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Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #5 on: November 24, 2013, 01:55:20 pm »
Can we please don't start that "How stupid were you guys, to leave your stuff there" discussion.
The site had a min. 2%+ withdrawal fee and it was sometimes troublesome to deposit your funds.  So getting your funds in and out wasn't that easy.
Sure, If you trade on such exchanges you take a certain risk and you should never leave unnecessary funds there.
But if you want to trade, you have to leave a certain amount on that site, right?
Further, the site could have been perceived as legit because it was (or at least seemed to be) operated by an active community member and a company based in canada
(please note the subjunctive) also the folks from III also had the impression it was legit (no offence).

If Silfax really left a 100K$+ Wallet on the same digitalocean instance he was serving the website from (or leaving it on DO at all) I don't wanna be him right now.
On the one hand I understand everyone who is unhappy right now (I am too, btw),  on the other hand everyone makes mistakes. So please stay respectful.
Playing the blame game (in either direction) just makes it worse.

@Silfax: If we can help you anyhow, let us know. 
« Last Edit: November 24, 2013, 02:15:22 pm by bobb »

Offline alexkravets

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Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #4 on: November 24, 2013, 01:10:27 pm »
Never hold any IOUs, in n out only. Sooner or later people will learn


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Offline legitnick

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Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #3 on: November 24, 2013, 11:07:30 am »
If he lives in the US I hope his story checks out because if not then he could be facing some pretty serious federal charges but it all depends on how this plays out in the next couple of days. I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so incompetent on purpose, I suspect that whoever gained access to his account did so to make it look like he had been hacked. If he fails to provide us with any evidence to support his claims digitalocean should be able to.

Offline bytemaster

Re: ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2013, 04:27:10 am »
One of our employees had $5000 at his exchange, so we are taking this very seriously.   

I have his Skype contact and know people who know him so do not suspect any intentional fraud.

All signs point to this being a case of poor security from an alpha-quality exchange.  Please hold judgement until he has a chance to report.   It is incredibly scary to be responsible for the loss of $100K in funds that belong to other people and I suspect he is in more of a panic than you are.

Sources claim the Digital Ocean Instance was deleted, but they keep the images around. 

Anyone at Digital Ocean could have walked off with the wallet and that is just the consequence of using a VPS provider.




This is what is going on right now...
« Last Edit: November 24, 2013, 04:29:17 am by bytemaster »
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Offline TwoKoolFourSkewl

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ATTENTION! What Happened to Bit-U and Who is Silfax? Where is our MONEY?!
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2013, 04:20:17 am »
I went to bit-u.com to log into my account and instead found this message:

"We have some sort of big issue. Please refrain from depositing to your address. Hopefully this will get sorted out soon. I have to take the site down while I contact my partners."

No one seems to know what is really going on and Silfax isn't responding.  Silfax needs to inform his customers of the situation.  Many of us had substantial amounts of money on his exchange and are concerned about OUR MONEY!

It looks like he ran off with all his customers' money.  He had to have at least 100k USD on his exchange.  I had over 106 pts on his exchange.

Silfax was on the forum tonight at 7:12 PM.  If he doesn't respond to anyone and tell us what happened to our money, I am requesting that Bytemaster, Stan, Bo Shen or someone at Invictus Innovations provide us with the IP logs for Silfax's connections to the forum.

He also has disappeared from the #protoshares channel on IRC.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2013, 04:26:38 am by TwoKoolFourSkewl »
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