Bitcoin Forum

Economy => Speculation => Topic started by: massivebitman on March 12, 2013, 01:23:37 PM



Title: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: massivebitman on March 12, 2013, 01:23:37 PM
Hi all,

The latest kerfuffle with the faulty code, means a lot of people have temporarily stopped mining no?

Did this / Doesn't this leave the network open to a 51% attack?

Seems the hashrate is plummeting.


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: crazy_rabbit on March 12, 2013, 02:54:38 PM
Hi all,

The latest kerfuffle with the faulty code, means a lot of people have temporarily stopped mining no?

Did this / Doesn't this leave the network open to a 51% attack?

Seems the hashrate is plummeting.

No. The only reason hashrate would be dropping is that miners are changing their software. No 51% is possible because of this. The hash rate is still extraordinarily high- and it takes awhile for the diff to adjust.


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: elux on March 12, 2013, 07:49:54 PM

No 51% is possible necessary because of this.


10000 USD double spend: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.0


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: Spaceman_Spiff on March 12, 2013, 07:51:56 PM
Hi all,

The latest kerfuffle with the faulty code, means a lot of people have temporarily stopped mining no?

Did this / Doesn't this leave the network open to a 51% attack?

Seems the hashrate is plummeting.

No, that will only be a very temporary thing.  Once all miners are mining the correct fork again, we are back at 100% hash speed.

EDIT: probably everyone is mining the correct fork now, now that 0.7 fork is the longest.


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: RodeoX on March 12, 2013, 07:54:22 PM
I suspect miners are feverishly patching to get back online before the hash rate returns.


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: FreeMoney on March 12, 2013, 10:03:21 PM
I suspect miners are feverishly patching to get back online before the hash rate returns.

I'm sure they are trying to get back to making money, but miners earn rate in the short term is not affected by the hash rate, just the difficulty. If everyone but 1 miner stopped mining that miner would make the same amount for a very long time.


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: AndyRossy on March 12, 2013, 11:28:10 PM

No 51% is possible necessary because of this.


10000 USD double spend: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.0

wow, just wow. 


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: Spaceman_Spiff on March 12, 2013, 11:57:24 PM

No 51% is possible necessary because of this.


10000 USD double spend: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.0

This was not a 51% attack.  Nobody intentionally gained 51% of hashing power for their own purpose.
It was a bug in the 0.7 client that caused a blockchain fork, which left the network open to doublespending for a short while.


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: AndyRossy on March 13, 2013, 12:33:18 AM

No 51% is possible necessary because of this.


10000 USD double spend: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.0

This was not a 51% attack.  Nobody intentionally gained 51% of hashing power for their own purpose.
It was a bug in the 0.7 client that caused a blockchain fork, which left the network open to doublespending for a short while.

And you dont see why this is a problem? Regardless of the cause? Previously people have been under the impression "double spends" only exist if >51% network - which is actaully not true anyway, it's a lot less.


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: Spaceman_Spiff on March 13, 2013, 12:37:18 AM

No 51% is possible necessary because of this.


10000 USD double spend: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.0

This was not a 51% attack.  Nobody intentionally gained 51% of hashing power for their own purpose.
It was a bug in the 0.7 client that caused a blockchain fork, which left the network open to doublespending for a short while.

And you dont see why this is a problem? Regardless of the cause? Previously people have been under the impression "double spends" only exist if >51% network - which is actaully not true anyway, it's a lot less.

Did I say it was not a problem? He changed to quote to make it sound like it was a 51% attack, I was merely pointing out that a 51% is a different thing.


Title: Re: Does the latest bug open the network up to attack?
Post by: Zangelbert Bingledack on March 13, 2013, 03:53:50 PM
All hard forks enable double spending. People will simply learn to check more carefully that there are no major competing forks when they accept transactions. Or more likely such monitoring will be incorporated into the software automatically and invisibly in a future version. So actually, the latest bug will result in not the opening but the closing up of attack vectors.