Question about market hacks and exit scams

If a market (or tumbler etc.) was hacked and they tried to cover it up or was starting an exit scam would it be possible to find out by looking at the blockchain?

Looking back at Evo's exit scam was there any suspicious transactions that could have tipped us off that they were about to scam? Would it be possible to look for similar patterns in the blockchain for current markets and predict exit scams in the future?

I read this in a post by /u/J0NJ0NES

Recently Agora had significant downtime. The ability to withdraw coins was suspended. They claim they were under a DDOS attack. After dealing with the problem, they came back online and both users and vendors were eventually able to withdraw coins. We can assume that they are better off now because they've learned something from this experience, and are better able to deal with DDOS attacks. The end result is that they continue to occupy the "Superlist", and not the "Wall of Shame". Their business survives, and we keep a great market as a resource.

So what's the problem you ask? If Agora, by seeing what happened to Bitcoin Blender, realized that they couldn't be honest about what really happened to them, like say a security breach that cause coins to be stolen, because they would be effectively blacklisted and their business killed, they would make the wise yet dishonest choice of claiming all their problems were due to a DDOS attack. I'm not saying that's what happened, but if Agora was breached I can guarantee you that is the story they would spin, and I wouldn't blame them for obvious reasons.

If the recent problems with Agora were due to a hack would it be possible to determine with some blockchain analysis?


Comments


[1 Points] hacksforcrack:

It is unlikely but it depends on the way they decide to spread their coins across addresses.


[1 Points] None:

Without admin control of the server, you aren't going to know all the wallets associated with Agora. You can search your address and follow your commision to a hefty wallet, but you wont find anything suspicious about that.

The only time you are going to start seeing transactions that point to an exit scam will be after everyone is already sure it is happening. Withdrawals will stop, as they have before, and at that point, its pointless to search the blockchain because you aren't going to get your money back if it is happening anyways.

With all this said, I don't think Agora is trying to hide anything from us as much as I think they are being extremely cautious. They could care less about if their site is more down than up. That could very well be the difference between freedom and jail time. Its an absolute internet empire at this point. The less information they give to the public, the better. Security always surpasses the customer with markets with inelastic illegal products.