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Title: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: ianbakewell on September 28, 2012, 04:23:06 PM I just noticed this thread in the mining section:
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (http://www.ethz.ch/) has started to mine with large power: http://blockchain.info/blocks/82.130.102.160 http://bgp.he.net/ip/82.130.102.160 (http://bgp.he.net/ip/82.130.102.160) EDIT: they wrote a paper about Bitcoin some days ago maybe they are now very interested to dive in: http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ethlife.ethz.ch%2Farchive_articles%2F120924_Neuer_Globe_Bitcoin_fw%2Findex&act=url Crossposting for awareness and further discussion. Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: cypherdoc on September 28, 2012, 04:32:21 PM if it were an attack why would they have contacted the devs ahead of time?
Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: cypherdoc on September 28, 2012, 05:12:38 PM It is a university, so I figured they were not hostile. Did not see any mention of contact with the devs. Still, 10% of the network is a hell of a lot to just "turn on" suddenly :o Wonder how much more they have up the sleeve. this is actually old news from a few weeks back when they published the paper. at that time, they said they had contacted the devs. what is new is that they've actually demonstrated, with evidence, their theory in action. Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Come-from-Beyond on September 28, 2012, 05:16:46 PM Zurich? Is it where a lot of bankers live? :)
Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: lakeluke on September 28, 2012, 05:35:33 PM Can someone pls post a link to their paper; thanks
Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Ivica on September 28, 2012, 05:37:48 PM Can someone pls post a link to their paper; thanks This one http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/248 ? Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Stephen Gornick on September 28, 2012, 06:03:04 PM what is new is that they've actually demonstrated, with evidence, their theory in action. Well, new back in May when their results were first shared. This is for the race attack (on 0/unconfirmed transctions), and not a 51% attack which could reverse confirmed transactions. - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending They describe how they could connect to their "test vendor", which means that vendor's node wasn't configured according to the recommendations (i.e., no incoming connections, explicitly connect outgoing to hub nodes): - http://blockchain.info/hub-nodes Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Dansker on September 28, 2012, 07:50:25 PM About time a university started researching Bitcoin seriously.
Stress testing the network and protocol by a neutral party is something we should be grateful for, regardless of the immediate consequences. If they can disrupt the network, so can others. And then I prefer this uni to do it, so we can learn from it rather than die from it. Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Severian on September 28, 2012, 07:57:35 PM Stress testing the network and protocol by a neutral party is something we should be grateful for, regardless of the immediate consequences. Well said. Just quoting you for reinforcement. Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Cdecker on September 28, 2012, 08:00:04 PM Well I was wondering how long it would take for people to notice. It's me :D
And no I am not putting lots of hashing power to the network, notice that it just says "relayed by" and not "mined by". I'm performing some measurements, paper is due in a few weeks. Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Gyrsur on September 28, 2012, 08:02:27 PM About time a university started researching Bitcoin seriously. Stress testing the network and protocol by a neutral party is something we should be grateful for, regardless of the immediate consequences. If they can disrupt the network, so can others. And then I prefer this uni to do it, so we can learn from it rather than die from it. the whole mining process has to be inspected. all the involved parties which producing no really value have to be sorted out! Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: allthingsluxury on September 28, 2012, 08:02:44 PM Will be interesting to see how this all unfolds.
Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Dansker on September 28, 2012, 08:05:18 PM Well I was wondering how long it would take for people to notice. It's me :D And no I am not putting lots of hashing power to the network, notice that it just says "relayed by" and not "mined by". I'm performing some measurements, paper is due in a few weeks. Can you somehow prove this is you doing this? Also, what you are doing, care to "explain it like I'm 5"? Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Gyrsur on September 28, 2012, 08:05:24 PM Well I was wondering how long it would take for people to notice. It's me :D And no I am not putting lots of hashing power to the network, notice that it just says "relayed by" and not "mined by". I'm performing some measurements, paper is due in a few weeks. thank you! due your work I came under attack of some moderators and some pool operators (which I really like!) Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Cdecker on September 28, 2012, 08:11:18 PM Well I was wondering how long it would take for people to notice. It's me :D And no I am not putting lots of hashing power to the network, notice that it just says "relayed by" and not "mined by". I'm performing some measurements, paper is due in a few weeks. thank you! due your work I came under attack of some moderators and some pool operators (which I really like!) I can't give you the exact details of what I'm doing until it gets published. I can tell you that I participate in the network as any other node does, I'm just a very big node (5'000 connections open), and am thus considered a Hub in Blockchain.info's vocabulary :D Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Akka on September 28, 2012, 08:12:54 PM Well I was wondering how long it would take for people to notice. It's me :D And no I am not putting lots of hashing power to the network, notice that it just says "relayed by" and not "mined by". I'm performing some measurements, paper is due in a few weeks. Can you somehow prove this is you doing this? Also, what you are doing, care to "explain it like I'm 5"? Its really him: http://www.disco.ethz.ch/members/cdecker.html Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Cdecker on September 28, 2012, 08:16:35 PM I'm not the only one working with such large nodes btw. There seems to be someone from the university of Munich that is doing something similar:
Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Gyrsur on September 28, 2012, 08:19:04 PM Well I was wondering how long it would take for people to notice. It's me :D And no I am not putting lots of hashing power to the network, notice that it just says "relayed by" and not "mined by". I'm performing some measurements, paper is due in a few weeks. thank you! due your work I came under attack of some moderators and some pool operators (which I really like!) I can't give you the exact details of what I'm doing until it gets published. I can tell you that I participate in the network as any other node does, I'm just a very big node (5'000 connections open), and am thus considered a Hub in Blockchain.info's vocabulary :D please read this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113654.0 Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: elux on September 28, 2012, 08:21:27 PM Well I was wondering how long it would take for people to notice. It's me And no I am not putting lots of hashing power to the network, notice that it just says "relayed by" and not "mined by". I'm performing some measurements, paper is due in a few weeks. Cool. Well, today I learned a bunch of arcana about relaying versus mining blocks. What, exactly, are you measuring? How many people are grappling with Bitcoin at ETH Zürich? thank you! due your work I came under attack of some moderators and some pool operators (which I really like!) Well that's a weird way to look at it. They happened to be right, and we happened to be wrong. There is not much honor in being a fool, but there can be some merit in admitting the mistake. Now, what we should do is learn from the experience, and only then feel good about ourselves. Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Cdecker on September 28, 2012, 08:23:21 PM please read this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113654.0 Sorry about that mate. The Paper is from another group (System Security) in the University, I'm in Distributed Computing.As far as I can tell we don't have any relevant computational power working on Bitcoin, I'm just relaying the blocks faster than others in the network. Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Gyrsur on September 28, 2012, 08:25:59 PM please read this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113654.0 Sorry about that mate. The Paper is from another group (System Security) in the University, I'm in Distributed Computing.As far as I can tell we don't have any relevant computational power working on Bitcoin, I'm just relaying the blocks faster than others in the network. Thank you, mate! And I'm feeling with you about your lost coins! Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Cdecker on September 28, 2012, 08:30:08 PM Thank you, mate! And I'm feeling with you about your lost coins! Thanks, it came really by surprise, and there I was believing I was secure... Well it goes to show that understanding something does not protect you from stupid mistakes.Anyway, sorry to have caused such an uproar, I'm just trying to improve the network, but if you still feel the need to block me I'm using the user agent string "/Snoopy:0.1/ETH Zurich/PlanetLab/" Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Dansker on September 28, 2012, 08:44:30 PM Can you at least tell us if you found any significant flaws in the system? :)
Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Cdecker on September 28, 2012, 09:25:59 PM Can you at least tell us if you found any significant flaws in the system? :) There are no new flaws from my side, as a researcher it is my ethical duty to inform the developers of anything that I find. Otherwise I'd be unable to publish my research results :DTitle: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: The_Duke on September 28, 2012, 09:27:34 PM The answer is yes. Bitcoin is under attack, by a small group of people who feel they are representatives of bitcoin, who have a lot to gain by being perceived as such, and who are trying to centralize bitcoin.
Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Deafboy on September 28, 2012, 09:28:05 PM Few days ago I have seen someone complaining about snoopy constantly contacting him while not answering any requests. Good to know what it is and who's running it. Good luck in your research.
Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Cdecker on September 28, 2012, 09:32:08 PM Few days ago I have seen someone complaining about snoopy constantly contacting him while not answering any requests. Good to know what it is and who's running it. Good luck in your research. Could you show me the post, if it's a problem on my side I'll fix it.Title: Re: Is Bitcoin currently under attack? Post by: Dansker on September 28, 2012, 10:04:07 PM Thank you for your replies, and sorry you got your bitcoins stolen!
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