ohh.. so the plot thickens. i hadn't considered that it was an inside job.
Discussion
he suspected someone who he had collaborated with on something, obviously. but he also obviously acknowledges that he slipped in his opsec:
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Bitcoin Theft from Luke Dashjr
In December 2022, Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr claimed that his Bitcoin holdings were stolen following a compromise of his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) key, resulting in the loss of approximately 216 BTC.
The theft occurred on December 31, 2022, with four outgoing transactions from his wallet totaling over 200 BTC.
At the time of the hack, the estimated loss was around $3.3 million, but with the current Bitcoin price, the value of the stolen coins exceeds $14 million.
Dashjr stated he was unaware of how the PGP key was compromised and did not provide a clear explanation of his wallet setup.
However, subsequent reports revealed that his server, which he had rented and was physically located off-site, had been accessed by an unknown party in November 2022, with malware and backdoors installed, likely through physical access to an unlocked server rack.
He admitted to connecting to this compromised server and using a workstation in his office, which was not properly segregated from other activities, potentially allowing the attacker to gain access to his PGP private key and Bitcoin hot wallet.
The incident has been described as a potential supply chain attack, where malicious code was injected into a system.
In April 2024, it was reported that the FBI was investigating the theft and had issued a subpoena to Mike Schmidt, co-founder of the Bitcoin non-profit Brink, demanding personal information of attendees at the October 2022 CoreDev Atlanta event, which occurred before TABConf 2022.
Schmidt confirmed he complied with the subpoena, providing first and last names, GitHub usernames, and email addresses of the attendees, after being legally advised to do so.
The FBI had requested that the subpoena remain confidential for one year, a restriction that expired shortly before Schmidt disclosed the information.
The purpose of the subpoena—whether to target a specific suspect or for general information gathering—remains unknown.
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this kind of incident obviously would have required someone to have had an inkling that he had the key stashed in encrypted form somewhere else, hackers would not randomly use specific tools if they did not have some way of acquiring the information that the booty was there to steal, and the selectivity of the attack was evidenced in the forensics of the server.
it could well be that the thief was second degree connected to someone he was associated with, but this person would have then been complicit in some respect if they did not declare this and participate in attempting to locate the thief.
anyhow, it wasn't a small thing, and he was stupid how he stored it, it would have hurt a lot, but an honest person, aside from trying to trace the path it took, would simply consider that the likely path by which the compromise happened associated with a particular group of people those people are no longer to be trusted. and probably he witnessed other things in the business of working on the repository that red flagged them as maybe not being honest people.
i believe that was when he split off and forked core into knots.
after all, the name relates to the account of jesus attacking the money changers, who are a type of thief. so it's obvious also that there is a motivation of retribution in his actions. greed, i doubt it, retribution, absolutely.
this also is consistent with what i'm saying - the attacks on his character are using greed as the hook, not vengeance. those coins were his rightful property. he is not "stealing them back" he's shunning the people he suspects of being complicit in the malicious act and setting himself up as a competitor, and questioning their actions to do things that have the smell of corruption.
so, he made knots, which is first of all a rebuke against clever thieves, and then he is raising questions about their motivations in doing things to the codebase that don't align with either bitcoin or the idea that they are honorable people, which would just serve to reinforce, in his mind, with this brigading that has been going on, that there is something dirty going on in that circle.