Bitcoin Forum

LINK TO WIRED ARTICLE: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/

Im dont have a degree in computer science and couldnt do any calculations even if we had real numbers about just how powerful the NSA's combined hashing power is, but given the scale and rate of development of massively parallel computing power the NSA has developed for code breaking, and given that they employ thousands of the smartest and best programmers and cryptographers in the world, and given that they have an unlimited budget, its seems obvious to me that the US Gov could have the NSA 51% attack any coin at any time. They have machines which make your Avalon look like a Casio watch from 1980.

Sorry for the downer, and hey at least Bitcoins have bounced back a little today. But to me this seems to be by far the biggest threat to Bitcoin and all the altcoins. Sorry if this has been posted or discussed here before, I did a quick search but didnt find much.

"the agency has not finished building at Oak Ridge, nor is it satisfied with breaking the petaflop barrier. Its next goal is to reach exaflop speed, one quintillion (1018) operations a second, and eventually zettaflop (1021) and yottaflop."

Those are CPU cycles though...

Are they developing large amounts GPU or ASIC archetecture for SHA hasing?

They cannot. However, if they accept rather high cost at now visible gain the US is one of the powers still able to 51 Bitcoin.

It won't be that long though and the incentive isn't high enough. After that, Bitcoin is immortal.

Holy shit!  1021 operations per second!  You weren't kidding about the 1980 Casio watch!

So whats the solution here? Is there a solution?

Cheaper ASICS distributed to more people?

Patience (seems like a rare commodity amoung these parts)

That would be it.

Someday I'd expect something better than ASICs to be made too... We'll need to distribute that new tech out all again when that happens too.

The NSA devices must be fine tuned to Double SHA256 calculations to have even remote chance doing 51% attack on Bitcoin. And this will be one-shot wonder weapon.

To take away any coin at any time they must have guaranteed way to calculate private key from bitcoin address. Unlikely to happen.

As the USA government invests more time and research in waterboarding techniques than Bitcoin ASIC devices I will not worry about NSA attacking Bitcoin at all. The datacenter is for analyzing all Facebook and e-mail messages to calculate the exact time when You will put on suicide belt.

I really hope Im wrong and Im sure Im not the first person to consider this. Also, a 1 billion dollar market cap currency isnt a threat to the dollar.

But what about 10 billion? 100billion? 1 trillion? 10 trillion? When do they decide to pull the trigger, if they could?

Why cant they just write Bitcoin hashing code for their existing code breaking machines, fork the chain, invalidate all our coins, and then go back to hacking your Facebook to learn grandma's secret pie crust recipe?

bullshit

bitcoin is the most powerful computing effort undertaken by humans to date...by an order of magnitude and then some

Without ASICS they would have trouble getting enough power into any known facility.  If it is not ASIC they would not be able to do it easily even with a large budget.  

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2917/how-fast-is-the-bitcoin-mining-network

The biggest challenge will be to stay one step ahead of exa, zetta and yotta as they come.

I can assure you that the NSA has bigger things to worry about than bitcoin.

CIA to NSA:"WTF dude? We just finished the transition from cash in shopping bags and you did this?"

The american intelligence agencies have no incentive to bring down bitcoin. Unless the NSA receives an executive order to kill bitcoin, they simply won't do it.

& the CIA's jurisdiction is outside the USA. If anything, they would benefit from BTC because they can do all manner of covert payola ops to foreign bad guys and the like. If Ollie North had btc he would have never got caught. my guess is they already have btc and are looking to move it on to all the shifty terror groups they do business with on a daily basis. crime pays, especially if you the gubmint!

I totally agree with the OP. If some school kids can buy chips in China for some 20M USD, then the CIA can do so, too. Just for context: 20MUSD is about the amount the USA print every 15 minutes at least for the next 3 years.

Bitcoin definitely has made it on their radar, too.

My conclusion is that we already have the blessing of these circles. One version would be that Satoshi is the CIA. After all the $$ will fail, so what else would you do? Gold standard? Bitcoin is much easier to accumulate in the USA than gold. We know that at least 1 million BTC never moved and most likely are in the hands of Satoshi. We don't know how many of all the later coins also went back to Satoshi. Maybe Bitcoin is a scheme to aggregate 50% in the USA with controlled increase in popularity until 2020. Maybe the $$ crashes earlier.

Well, I bought some mɃ earlier today. No matter if it's the mark of the beast with full support by the US government or the cool free money we all dream of, I believe it will live. A 51% attack is not the end of it all. We will find a way.

This.
and you don't need to create an entirely new system of ASIC hardware that would stick out like a sore thumb.  

much easier and cheaper for covert agencies, hack people, hack the trust system.

i.e. let's talk destabilisation conspiracies.

step 1, create a screen and cover identity for one group, the hook, and the bait.
all you need to do is set up a large pool and invite people in, as to create a poisoned network node for confirming a larger pool, this needs to be "super secure" and well respected. think p2pool. this would be the security bait.

step 2, destabilise the other large pools and select a nominal target, so you can create a monopoly from the rubble, a big fish.

step 3, find an insecure server that hosts a large 40% pool, set up a tap/backdoor on the machine(s), insert your double-spend or false transaction record binary instructions into custom compiled pool daemon's and regular people will do the hard work of hiding data in the network.

step 4, establish trust in the big system and the little system at the same time, so that a general public will believe in following/propping up the big fish, while detail oriented people will move towards the security bait which has the hook.

step 5, you can keep the big fish away from the hook for as long as you need the system to work to do what you want it to.
after which, you can remove either the fish or the hook, and the system won't notice the loss. remove both, and tampering becomes more obvious.

The reality of doing this would be difficult to hide due to crypto being rooted within the protocol itself, it's the confirmations, or lack of, that matter in this kind of setup. The best analogy would be FOX news. you don't need to create or mock up news from scratch to insert a message, all you need to do is modify the content a little bit and then repeat the process, the other networks will propagate the false news as if it were accurate, forcing others to also confirm the "new" news.

When the bitcoin market cap is 1 trillion, the mining network hardware would be worth roughly 10B at minimum, so the NSA need to at minimum invest 10B to have a remote chance to 51%, also the government usually can't work that efficiently, more like 30B investment. Good luck getting that budget passed in Congress.

Already solved. AMD stock up 5% today on news 3rd gen video game platforms will be chock full of Hash power.

We call it the Strategic Hash Reserves.

This after recent reports of video game companies operating mines with customers' in-home compute cycles...

51% attack won't affect existing coins, it will just make people hoard more and spend less ;)

Not necessarily. Imagine the aggressor is several governments united that decide to take over mining, combined with a 1% Tobin tax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax) payable as transaction fee.

So people here are like "Even if this three-letter agency were to spend billions of dollars of taxpayers' money just to disrupt a civilian network run partly by American citizens, I would do nothing but get others to harden my network", really?

I wouldn't be surprised at all if they could do it, nor if they have a contingency plan for taking down the entire Internet at least briefly.  If not the NSA, then some other TLA.  

The question is why would they want to?  

I'm sure they are watching with fascination, but I think they'd be a lot more likely to use Bitcoin themselves than want to destroy it.  I'd guess the same about the CIA.

First news for you: their budget is limited. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States

Second news: the USA actually tacitly approves of Bitcoin: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/fincen-bitcoin-users-not-regulated-exchanges-are/ - They would rather make money from it (via taxes) rather than destroy it, makes sense, right?

Even  if they managed to 51% Bitcoin-

It would only come at major expense
And we could easily move to another coin, forever

The Government can't do anything more about crypto-currency than they could about Pirate Bay

Couldn't some big gov entity just swallow up a bunch of ASIC wafers and get 51% that way? If a government really wants to kill Bitcoins, if the banks wants to kill Bitcoins, it shouldn't be too hard to get that type of computing power.

They're the NSA.  If they wanted, they could spend <1% of their budget, have some nice 28nm ASICs fabbed and mass produced and take like 80% of the network.

Good news though.  They don't give a shit.

I'm more than pretty confident they cannot  :D

unfortunately they cannot and would end up spending a billion dollars and end up with one of these

http://www.visualphotos.com/photo/2x4104121/pink_wafer_biscuits_MON053021.jpg

But they can not do it secretively, they will have to join the network and thus revealing their identity to have an impact, and this directly defeat the purpose of  existence of "No Such Agency".

Agree, they don't give a shit. And by the time anybody does start giving a shit, Bitcoin will be used widely enough that people will get upset if anyone tries to disrupt it. This was also the genius of the early internet: The same technology that's to make dissident political communications hard to censor is also used for commerce and chatting to friends. You can't shut down the one without shutting down the other. This makes the network very strong, because people may not be bothered about some nutjob's right to express his political views, but mess with their ability to share pictures of their cats and THE STREETS WILL RUN RED WITH THE BLOOD OF REVOLUTION.

That said, if they were so minded it shouldn't cost a government (or anybody with a lot of capital who really cared) that much to take over the mining infrastructure. Done at scale in a competitive market, mining should be slightly profitable. If you're prepared to run at a very modest loss, or even zero profit, you should be able force up the block difficulty up and push the revenue per dollar spent on hardware / electricity down to the point where it becomes unprofitable for anyone else to do it. At that point (economically) rational miners would give up and you'd have the [marginally loss-making] mining business to yourself.

Paranoid much?  Get a grip guys, the US Gov doesn't give 2 shits about bitcoin.  Bankers aren't quaking in their boots, get over yourselves.

The banks are freezing assets of exchanges that aren't following the rules... full stop.  KYC laws are serious business designed to help track down those performing questionable banking practices (money laundering, etc.).  US exchanges that follow the rules will be just fine.

There is a new type of bitcoin enthusiast that will quickly out number the crypto anarchist / libertarian gov. haters that have been trolling these boards for years.  They are finally bringing big money and legitimacy to bitcoin.  Stop trying to scare them off.

TBF a little bit of paranoia can be a good thing with a technology that's supposed to be censorship-resistant. Even if people in high places aren't particularly out to get you, there's a lot to be said for designing technologies that you could depend on if it turned out that they were.

I agree 100%.  However, the only people currently attacking bitcoin in any real way are those manipulating the MtGox market  prices.  The crashing is ruining consumer confidence, precisely at a time when we need stability and growth.

This has just shown that although Bitcoin is ready, the services surrounding it aren't.

I agree with OP.  What do you think they are doing with all that power?  Breaking codes, matching hashes, the same kind of thing Bitcoin miners do.

Also, they could hack into any exchange they want... surprised Gox hasn't been hacked more.

They or other governments could I suppose. Although I don't see why they would want to.

It's starting to seem more and more likely though that most governments will embrace bitcoin  (or p2p crytpocurrency in general) and it will coincide alongside with fiat government issued currency.  As of right now I don't really see or fear a backlash of government towards bitcoin.

Of course countries ran by authoritize regimes (China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc etc) would probably try to take a hardline approach on something like bitcoin if it undermined their power or influence at all.

I don't think the market cap is the real threat. The whole idea of taking away control over both supply and traceability of transactions is annoying the New World Order pyramid.

https://i.imgur.com/OkoI1yw.png

Written code is inefficient. CPU mining shows this. First the code is compiled from C++ to ASM by compiler on Satoshi's notebook. Then the ASM x86 instructions are translated into RISC instructions by CPU internal hardware to finally execute. ASIC hardware have the logic needed for Bitcoin hashing designed into silicon wafers and transistors bypassing ALL other steps needed. This is why ASIC is the fastest solution possible and also this makes the ASIC unsuitable to any other purpose than Bitcoin mining and home heating.

If the 51% attack starts today all they can do is invalidate transactions starting from today. Unless they redo ALL work from last checkpoint hardcoded into Bitcoin-Qt that is more challenging than simple 51% denial of service and doublespend attack.This.I think reading private e-mails of all population to figure out who don't like USA government and new world order is more important task. Seriously. More than 50% of world hates USA. Now that's a 51% attack against USA!Even if they receive such orders all they can do is attack public persons involved in Bitcoin, take down exchanges and services accepting them and attack individual nodes. This will bring chaos and destruction but the Bitcoin will survive. Think about going really hidden and anonymous then.Think about BFL and Inaba scaming CIA like everyone else. :D They can order the ASIC chips from foundries but it might be hard for them to keep this secret. The designs might get leaked, the chips might be produced more than ordered and sold on black market. There are not many foundries in world who operate on recent 28nm or even 45nm process. They need such process unless they are ready to use outdated and inefficient 180nm.We already figured out that Satoshi is time traveler from future and not Sirius. He definitely could not be CIA. :D Invalidate the current US Dollar, start printing red colored dollars called New US Dollar. Exchange all current US dollars for new US dollars with exchange rate 200 to 1. Problem solved. Learn what the government fucks did to money in Latvia after fall of USSR.Sure they can switch off large part of internet. Including their own military systems depending on Internet. Existing network in other parts in world will continue to function. Bitcoin will continue to function there too.They actually could do less. Pirate Bay have centralized servers. Raid them, take them offline, harass the owners. Bitcoin is decentralized to such degree that every node and pool is independent Pirate Bay.In the moment they start to plan this move, the spy agencies in Russia, China, Iran will be informed. They might not care about well-being of Bitcoin but they might sabotage the NSA-CIA work as a routine action of spite and lulz. Contaminating the fab facility by subtle sabotage is not hard for them. Definitely it does not cost 30 billion or require Otto Skorenzy parachuting over the fab.Even 13 year old boy can do that without revealing himself. They connect to Bitcoin network using Tor and then publish the longer malicious chain. I just solved the problem for NSA. They are welcome to send the hacked bitcoins to address in my signature as I probably spared them of few million taxpayers USD needed to solve this problem!This largely depends on how many people are willing to go on streets and start shooting at police and military troops because they cannot share lolcats in internet. And how victoriously they could do it without being defeated. For this to happen the situation in other aspects of society must be as bad too. This is why all regulations, censorship and taking away civil liberties are done slowly and in small increments.Mass surveillance of both domestic and foreign population. Datamining and storing every communication for eternity.Bullshit. Everyone who knows about computer security will agree that there is no such thing as guaranteed hackability. This is why Pirate Bay was physically raided and taken away and not hacked from NSA or FBI every time it resurfaced.I think these countries might embrace Bitcoin instead as a weapon to destabilize USA monetary grip over world.

within a year, diff will be so high that even NSA wont be able to 51 BTC, at least not without a really significant expense.. like too expensive, even for the NSA !!!

BTC will strive forever !

Fed-up adults will not break up kids' game by playing the game. 

I don't think the market cap is the real threat. The whole idea of taking away control over both supply and traceability of transactions is annoying the New World Order pyramid.

https://i.imgur.com/OkoI1yw.png

Written code is inefficient. CPU mining shows this. First the code is compiled from C++ to ASM by compiler on Satoshi's notebook. Then the ASM x86 instructions are translated into RISC instructions by CPU internal hardware to finally execute. ASIC hardware have the logic needed for Bitcoin hashing designed into silicon wafers and transistors bypassing ALL other steps needed. This is why ASIC is the fastest solution possible and also this makes the ASIC unsuitable to any other purpose than Bitcoin mining and home heating.

If the 51% attack starts today all they can do is invalidate transactions starting from today. Unless they redo ALL work from last checkpoint hardcoded into Bitcoin-Qt that is more challenging than simple 51% denial of service and doublespend attack.This.I think reading private e-mails of all population to figure out who don't like USA government and new world order is more important task. Seriously. More than 50% of world hates USA. Now that's a 51% attack against USA!Even if they receive such orders all they can do is attack public persons involved in Bitcoin, take down exchanges and services accepting them and attack individual nodes. This will bring chaos and destruction but the Bitcoin will survive. Think about going really hidden and anonymous then.Think about BFL and Inaba scaming CIA like everyone else. :D They can order the ASIC chips from foundries but it might be hard for them to keep this secret. The designs might get leaked, the chips might be produced more than ordered and sold on black market. There are not many foundries in world who operate on recent 28nm or even 45nm process. They need such process unless they are ready to use outdated and inefficient 180nm.We already figured out that Satoshi is time traveler from future and not Sirius. He definitely could not be CIA. :D Invalidate the current US Dollar, start printing red colored dollars called New US Dollar. Exchange all current US dollars for new US dollars with exchange rate 200 to 1. Problem solved. Learn what the government fucks did to money in Latvia after fall of USSR.Sure they can switch off large part of internet. Including their own military systems depending on Internet. Existing network in other parts in world will continue to function. Bitcoin will continue to function there too.They actually could do less. Pirate Bay have centralized servers. Raid them, take them offline, harass the owners. Bitcoin is decentralized to such degree that every node and pool is independent Pirate Bay.In the moment they start to plan this move, the spy agencies in Russia, China, Iran will be informed. They might not care about well-being of Bitcoin but they might sabotage the NSA-CIA work as a routine action of spite and lulz. Contaminating the fab facility by subtle sabotage is not hard for them. Definitely it does not cost 30 billion or require Otto Skorenzy parachuting over the fab.Even 13 year old boy can do that without revealing himself. They connect to Bitcoin network using Tor and then publish the longer malicious chain. I just solved the problem for NSA. They are welcome to send the hacked bitcoins to address in my signature as I probably spared them of few million taxpayers USD needed to solve this problem!This largely depends on how many people are willing to go on streets and start shooting at police and military troops because they cannot share lolcats in internet. And how victoriously they could do it without being defeated. For this to happen the situation in other aspects of society must be as bad too. This is why all regulations, censorship and taking away civil liberties are done slowly and in small increments.Mass surveillance of both domestic and foreign population. Datamining and storing every communication for eternity.Bullshit. Everyone who knows about computer security will agree that there is no such thing as guaranteed hackability. This is why Pirate Bay was physically raided and taken away and not hacked from NSA or FBI every time it resurfaced.I think these countries might embrace Bitcoin instead as a weapon to destabilize USA monetary grip over world.

Also I'm slightly annoyed about the way mom quotes. Almost as bad as German 8 o'clock news. Source: Internet

Even if the government decided to take such action, even if they effectively "killed" Bitcoin, there are about 10 others to choose from I think. Bitcoin is a hydra, cut off one head two more appear  ;D

fortunately this isnt really a threat. the computers they have now are not designed to hash sha256 and if they did invest the resources necessary to develop their own asics we would simply switch to a new POW scheme each time ;D

You've been watching too many movies haven't you? This is a plot from the movie Sneakers.

You will likely be able to go into Best Buy in the next few years and buy an ASIC miner, cheap.

I'm fairly confident you don't know what you're talking about.

FLoating point OPerations have nothing to do with bitcoin mining.

If our (US) government opts to allocate necessary resources to such an endeavor, my coins will be the least of my worries. My principal worry will be holding my place in line for government handouts that will be necessary to support those of us that do not hold the wealth needed to support this effort and still feed ourselves. The time may come. In the meantime the US government will likely resort to less resource intensive intrusions on both privacy and economy.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and assert that the NSA doesn't give a rat's ass about BitCoin, and most likely, never will.

OP, you're that confident because you don't know enough about bitcoin or computers.