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 <p class="is-style-lead">Aditya Baradwaj, a former <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="employee" href="https://thebittimes.com/tag/employee.html">employee</a> at Alameda Research, recently illuminated the risky, rapid operational practices at FTX and Alameda, pointing to skipped safety protocols.</p>
 <p class="is-style-default">In a Twitter thread, former Alameda Research <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="employee" href="https://thebittimes.com/tag/employee.html">employee</a> Aditya Baradwaj looked inside the lack of risk <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="management" href="https://thebittimes.com/tag/management.html">management</a> policies and procedures at cryptocurrency exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research.</p>
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    <p lang="en" dir="ltr">PART 3: THE HACKS<br><br>or<br><br>How poor security practices at Alameda Research caused the company to lose hundreds of millions of dollars<br><br>(1/n) #SBF #FTX pic.twitter.com/RFocE7w3Gx</p>— Adi (e/acc) (@aditya_baradwaj) October 11, 2023
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 <p>Baradwaj explained that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried believed moving quickly was the most important thing for a startup like FTX and Alameda. As a result, standard engineering and accounting practices were ignored.</p>
 <p>According to Baradwaj, this meant no code testing and incomplete balance accounting. Safety checks and proper key storage were only added when absolutely necessary.</p>
 <p>While this allowed developers to work rapidly, it also led to major security incidents every few months, costing the companies tens of millions of dollars in losses.</p>
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 <p>Baradwaj cited three examples: a phishing attack costing over $100 million, a dispute with a questionable blockchain creator resulting in a $40 million loss, and a leaked plaintext keys file enabling an attacker to steal $50 million.</p>
 <p>Despite these repeated incidents, Baradwaj claims no serious changes were made to FTX and Alameda Research operations under Bankman-Fried’s leadership. The risky practices continued until the recent collapse of FTX amid liquidity issues and allegations of mishandled customer funds.</p>
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  <p>“It’s the kind of risk-taking that seems to work… until it doesn’t.”</p> <cite>Aditya Baradwaj, former employee at Alameda Research</cite>
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  </svg> <span class="cn-block-related-link__prefix"> Read more: </span> SBF trial day 6: FTX paid $100m in Chinese bribes to unfreeze $1b of investigated funds
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<p>Source: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://thebittimes.com/ex-employee-exposes-risk-management-flaws-at-ftx-alameda-tbt66140.html">https://thebittimes.com/ex-employee-exposes-risk-management-flaws-at-ftx-alameda-tbt66140.html</a></p>

Ex-employee exposes risk management flaws at FTX, Alameda

TheBitTimes

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