Researchers state that only 386 bitcoins could have been stolen via the transaction malleability vulnerability in the bitcoin protocol. This would allow the statements of Mt. Gox about the ‘disappearance’ of bitcoins could be further questioned.
Researchers Christian Decker and Roger Wattenhofer of ETH Zurich University in Switzerland analyzed all bitcoin transactions as of January 2013, while also press releases from Mt. Gox were watched. This included possible instances of double spending, an unconfirmed transaction, and the related transaction malleability vulnerability. This last vulnerability, according to Mt. Gox, which has filed for deferrals in the US and Japan, may have been the reason for the disappearance of 850,000 bitcoins, possibly as a result of a targeted attack.
According to the researchers, it may be impossible to detect the Mt. Gox said numbers go. For example, almost 80 percent of the attacks via the transaction malleability method would not succeed and, after an analysis, they arrive at 386 bitcoins that were captured in this way from the exchange after January 1, 2013, so that the closed exchange should once ‘explain where the other approximately 849,000 bitcoins have remained’. It is noted, however, that the investigators did not look for possible false transactions on Mt. Gox for January 1, 2013, but additionally they report a significant number of attacks after Mt. Gox had issued press releases describing such attack methods.
mt. Gox announced last week that it had recovered 200,000 bitcoins in wallets that were allegedly stored in an old format. Now that 200,000 bitcoins have been found, the exchange’s lost coins have been reduced to 650,000. The likelihood that affected users of Mt. Gox, however, seeing their money back is nil: first it is the turn of preferential creditors.