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Bitcoin => Development & Technical Discussion => Topic started by: Matthew N. Wright on March 26, 2013, 06:57:16 PM



Title: Masking Miner Activity
Post by: Matthew N. Wright on March 26, 2013, 06:57:16 PM
Would it be possible to have a script that connects through different proxies *each time* your ASIC were to ask for new work, and thus make the network think that you were different miners all with the same hashing speed?


Title: Re: Masking Miner Activity
Post by: kjj on March 26, 2013, 07:28:35 PM
Sure.  And if you can find a pool that pays based on work requested rather than work completed, PM me.


Title: Re: Masking Miner Activity
Post by: Matthew N. Wright on March 26, 2013, 07:36:20 PM
Sure.  And if you can find a pool that pays based on work requested rather than work completed, PM me.

I didn't mean to sound like the miner wouldn't be doing any work, but I wasn't aware it needed to be connected while doing the work other than to *submit* the actual work once a share/block was found. I don't understand the process completely is why I'm asking.

I have this picture in my head of a miner asking for work, switching to another IP address, submitting that work, rinsing, repeating, and masking the fact that it's a single ASIC. Would that work?


Title: Re: Masking Miner Activity
Post by: kjj on March 26, 2013, 08:08:33 PM
Maybe you'd be better off just explaining what you want to do.

No one anywhere is going to get confused about your hashing speed.  No one counts work requests as speed, they count work returned.

The getwork protocol doesn't care about IPs, but the tracking database might, so your work may or may not be accepted at all, depending on the server you are talking to.  Stratum uses a persistent connection, and I don't know the protocol in enough detail to know whether or not it will accept (on the protocol level) work on one connection that was given out on a different connection.


Title: Re: Masking Miner Activity
Post by: Matthew N. Wright on March 26, 2013, 08:16:28 PM
Maybe you'd be better off just explaining what you want to do.

No one anywhere is going to get confused about your hashing speed.  No one counts work requests as speed, they count work returned.

The getwork protocol doesn't care about IPs, but the tracking database might, so your work may or may not be accepted at all, depending on the server you are talking to.  Stratum uses a persistent connection, and I don't know the protocol in enough detail to know whether or not it will accept (on the protocol level) work on one connection that was given out on a different connection.

To clarify, it's not something I want to do, it's something I suspect could be done by ASIC developers (mining before shipping). When I go to blockchain.info, it shows a pie chart showing the dissection of mining pools and their hashing speed. When a new block is found, it shows that IP with a label for which pool it came from. This is why I ask-- couldn't someone just change their IP everytiume they submitted to make it look like they were multiple individuals and not the same miner/pool?


Title: Re: Masking Miner Activity
Post by: Matthew N. Wright on March 26, 2013, 08:21:55 PM
Would it be possible to have a script that connects through different proxies *each time* your ASIC were to ask for new work, and thus make the network think that you were different miners all with the same hashing speed?

Is this about pools or solo? Cause the blockchain doesn't save the ip of the block finder, so your already masked in the respect.

Basically I'm trying to see if it'd be possible for someone like BFL to be mining right now with their ASICs and us not know about it, because instead of consistently mining blocks, they'd be jumping around to different IPs to make it look like different computers doing small amounts of work.


Title: Re: Masking Miner Activity
Post by: malevolent on March 26, 2013, 08:27:24 PM
To clarify, it's not something I want to do, it's something I suspect could be done by ASIC developers (mining before shipping). When I go to blockchain.info, it shows a pie chart showing the dissection of mining pools and their hashing speed. When a new block is found, it shows that IP with a label for which pool it came from. This is why I ask-- couldn't someone just change their IP everytiume they submitted to make it look like they were multiple individuals and not the same miner/pool?

The IP address you're referring to is the IP address of the node that first relayed the block. It is possible that someone with a better connection may appear as a large ''miner'' if he relays a block created by the actual miner.

There was a bit of ''panicking'' a while back over this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113654.0;all).


Title: Re: Masking Miner Activity
Post by: Matthew N. Wright on March 26, 2013, 08:28:51 PM
To clarify, it's not something I want to do, it's something I suspect could be done by ASIC developers (mining before shipping). When I go to blockchain.info, it shows a pie chart showing the dissection of mining pools and their hashing speed. When a new block is found, it shows that IP with a label for which pool it came from. This is why I ask-- couldn't someone just change their IP everytiume they submitted to make it look like they were multiple individuals and not the same miner/pool?

The IP address you're referring to is the IP address of the node that first relayed the block. It is possible that someone with a better connection may appear as a large ''miner'' if he relays a block created by the actual miner.

There was a bit of ''panicking'' a while back over this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113654.0;all).


Oh that's hilarious. I wasn't here during that time and missed that one. Thank you. So blockchain.info's chart for network hashing division is based on relayed blocks then?