Bitcoin Forum

delete

It doesn't really matter value-wise to let the difficulty stagnate, it's just like trickle blocks and then getting payday at the end of the month for a few days. In the end the same amount of coins should be averaged out, it does seem silly that there's no 'agreement' by the clients that "hey, difficulty won't be hit in two weeks at this rate, after two weeks retarget" I mean it's obviously easier to agree on a block number based on math of +2016 blocks or whatever, instead of an arbitrary time, but there's got to be some way to retarget sooner.

I'm no professional on the subject, but if you doublespend and not really use the spendings to cash out profit from it, it won't really be harming anything in the long run. Especially if you do it to two homemade wallets for yourself in a VM or another pc. You'd be able to test it and not harm anyone then.

In that case you could have tested with a much smaller amount of power on like bitcoin testnet anyway, so my guess is you're intending to profit off the attack which I can't condone or help you with.

Already registered .bit names shouldn't get hurt, you only pay the fee when you register a name, the rest is just swapping amount around, if you're not using register commands in the attack, you'll be only attacking the currency part of the coins themselves, it would only have an effect on exchanges if there was an absurd amount of coins hitting the market, obviously you'd be able to sell off at any price and still be profiting so you could crash all the bid orders.

Namecoin is more of a service than a cryptocurrency, and more about developing technology than making money. Since the development continues, it's not extremely important to get the difficulty down "ASAP". They developed the merged mining technology, which will almost certainly solve the problem without mangling with the retargeting scheme. ;)

I haven't thought about what you can do with that kind of attack in Namecoin. You shouldn't be able to register two names with the same coins. You could probably skin an exchange though...

It will happen 276 blocks later (@19200).

At first implementation of "merged mining" was planned at block 24,000 if I recall correctly.
Later it was changed to 19,200.

You could probably stop anyone else registering domains. In effect you would be the icann of .bit because no one could send registrations without your say.

I have shutdown the namecoin exchange while this attack is in process. I'll bring it up shortly with trading disabled to enable withdrawal of funds and reduce the danger of double spend issues.

BitcoinEXpress, are you the guy who makes the BitcoinExpress iPhone app?

Thanks, I've disabled trading in the meantime since I currently have poor network connectivity due to traveling which makes it difficult to fix issues. One thing to test would be to withdraw namecoins from the exchange and try to reverse it.

hu?

+1
it may be difficult to implement without vulnerabilities for Art to game

merged mining is a big horror.


I like the experiment you want to run but please do not hurt namecoin too much - it is by far the best fork.

imho it is because it is unique. unlike the other forks namecoin offers completely new features. it is not a bitcoin clone it is something completely different. namecoins having a value at all is only a side effect.

>If I were them I would be on launching some i0coin style re targeting like pronto.
I really hope they will. But I have discussed this already on the dot-bit forum to no avail.

>If the 51% attack is successful, you won't have to worry about merged mining as it won't happen.
I would hate merged mining to happen. From a bitcoin point of view AND from a namecoin point. But I still hope namecoin will live simply because it is a good idea.

You have already send the namecoin price down. I guess I should have bailed out earlier. You should announce attacks on the other forks as well.

Say you start your attack at block 18950, build your chain to 18970, then release it. Everything that anyone did - transfer coins, change / create .bit names, etc - between those 2 blocks will unhappen.

So if I transfer 200 mnc to an exchange in block 18951, the exchange waits until 18957 to confirm, I exchange for x btc & withdraw. After your chain is released, my 200 nmc appear back in my wallet. I still have the x btc, and the 200 nmc. The exchange is down by x btc.

To mitigate the effects of the attack, people only have to cease trading, as DoubleC has done.

Mining the minority chain is also a waste of effort.

Threatening an attack, credibly, is a DoS on the chain - until people are confident that the attack is over, noone will use it or mine it.

To truly test this, you will need to ensure that some of your hashpower remains on the minority (existing) chain, to process the transactions that will "disappear" when the new chain is released. A malicious attack relies on the minority chain continuing, so that the malicious transfers can be processed.

Interesting to see it in action....

So you want to destroy namecoin and the first serious attempt (in testing chains it works) to launch merged mining to improve bitcoin?
Merged mining is a great idea (by Satoshi, by the way) and both currencies will gain from it.
It seems you're in a hurry to attack namecoin because you won't be able to do it in the future. Can't you simulate the attack on you own fork?
Why do you have to attack other people's efforts and investments?
I think it is a very bad idea.
Please don't do it. Let us trade and register domains in peace. I only ask you to wait 272 more blocks. There's many people waiting to see it happen.
Please, DoubleC reopen the trade. Some people think namecoins will drop severely after merged mining comes in and I want to profit from that. I want to bet the opposite.

Bad people like BitcoinEXpress exist in our society most them work for governments but the rest that where too evil even for government exists in the public.  This attack will show the world the power of bitcoin if namecoin survives it.

I'm feel like selling 40K of gold to kick this ass hole to the curb.   But I must be clever and out smart instead of out spend.

So sad people are destructive not productive even sadder is some destroy for sport.

Ah well Like I said it's part of life we (good people) need to deal with it.

I think he just wants to prove Namecoin is vurnerable to Double Spending when network strength is low.
If he doesn't do it, someone else can.
Difficulty retargeting should be changed to solve it.

How does difficulty retargeting affect network strength? Hashing power is hashing power. I'm probably missing something here...

Yeah, sure, but that's as directly linked to network strength as calling everyone an idiot and changing your license. ;) Nothing a guaranteed increase and improved stability in hashing power can't fix. :D

There's one easy way to stop the attack; everyone start mining Namecoins.

The testnet has suffered rewrite-the-block-chain-with-more-hashing-power attacks.

It does bad things to your wallet, if your wallet contains transactions that depend on previously mined but now-no-longer-valid blocks. I suspect it will cause lots of heartburn for exchanges; this patch from sipa (which hasn't been extensively tested because long block-chain re-orgs on the main chain are not an issue) might help:
  https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/195

Alternatively, removing all the wtx wallet transactions stored in the wallet and then running with -rescan should get back to a sane state.  Although an exchange may very well find customers end up with negative balances after doing that, and customers will likely be upset that their balances are likely to change from what they think they have if they've deposited invalid-under-the-new-chain transactions.

Successfully bootstrapping an alternative chain starting from a low difficulty, given that there are people with lots of potential hashing power and the willingness to mess around with the chain "just because they can," seems like a hard problem to me, although if people were willing to accept some centralization until hashing power got to a "safe" level it could be solved by a central authority publishing block-chain checkpoints every X blocks.

you can only go back to the last checkpoint. are there any in namecoin?

It looks like there are none.

Given how recent run-in on Geist proceeded (and assuming it was indeed EXpress, which he implied he was), I suspect he has more in mind than just crude double-spend.

Perhaps  someone should log/record the attack to increase its educational value ?

How is this in the name of science? What are you going to discover that you can't in a test chain?
In the name of science I ask you not to do it. If you don't do it we will very soon see:

1) A chain changing its rules for acceptable blocks. Bitcoin may need this in the future.
2) An existing chain changing to merged mining instead of starting with it.
3) Merged mining finally at work !!

I you're successful destroying namecoin, we will have to wait for another currency with merged mining from its beginning.
This is not in the name of science. You don't care to attack other people's good efforts. As DavinciJ15 says, you're a bad person.

Don't you like decentralized DNS?
Don't you like merged mining?
Is this all bullshit and you're just buying cheap nmc?
Seriously, what's wrong with you?

Technically,  as long as the attack did not start NMC devs could go and make a quick checkpoint (or several lol)

Fo instance, namecoin's block 18931 has hash of


getblockbycount 18931



See? that was easy.

Now, someone could easily make a checkpoint "before it's too late" :)

How about doing it manually locally? How would it affect the result (assuming there's an attack) if majority of the nodes add arbitrary checkpoints (say, 120 blocks back)? Is it better if the checkpoint is the same on all the nodes but it's old, or heterogeneous but recent?

There is no legitimate reason for threatening namecoin. Even children understand that just because you can do something, that doesn't mean you should.

An attack like this shows nothing that we don't already know. Why not try to learn something that we don't know? For instance, let's see if merged mining really works on production chains. Why not put the hashing power towards something constructive? Show everyone that you're not a vandal - that you're bigger than that; mine namecoins and and get it up to the merging mark.

Make an internet with distributed currency and free DNS a reality.

Someone should get multicoin's namecoin config file updated with this and the new merged mining start block.

Yup.

But I am more concerned about some other aspects of your run-in, not the fact that you've earned yourself several hundred thousand geists (and it seems to me, scared away a certain exchange where you could have sold them :( ), so please elaborate on the methods you utilized (PM if you feel reluctant to discuss in public at this point)

I'm mining Namecoins @ Coinotron.com now, just to protect Namecoin against the attack.
More people want to join?

And yes, I know it's mining at loss but every coin is at loss atm so I don't really care...

I wonder if this attack would be legal?

Good luck.
I hope this will help us to improve Bitcoin & other crypto currencies further.

Wait... I thought that Namecoin had all of the protection measures that Bitcoin had, and that these exploits were only possible due to the changes to the difficulty code the other chains made?

The great news is that, even if this does work, an emergency block-chain lockin can be made. That being said, it's literally the last line of defense.

Well, "other" chains are just "more" vulnerable (though IMVHO bitcoin's window of 2h is, all things considered, a mite too wide).

However, if I understand the 51 issue correctly, you can enforce arbitrary rules when you have 51+, so whether or not a given failsafe is present becomes a moot point.

Abe (http://abe.john-edwin-tobey.org) is designed to record it, though it currently lacks a web interface to quickly look for chain splits.  The slow way is to look for blocks with more than one "next block" and follow the "next" links.  Anyway, I look forward to some nice test suite material.


I'm scratching my head over this conclusion.  If you publish a block 19200, merged mining happens, and very likely the whole network overpowers the attackers.  So you must plan on indefinitely preventing the chain of greatest work from having over 19200 blocks.  Perhaps by messing with the difficulty, shoot it up high for a low-numbered range, so high that the new chain has greater work than the current one, so you push the current block number back a few thousand.  Then stop mining the tip and let the public network dither (as it's currently doing) while you prepare your next "longest chain" at an even lower block height.  Etc.

Still a lot of ongoing work and expense, though admittedly, I have to read up on the ArtForz exploit you mentioned.  And if the Namecoin developers come up with a fix (even something as simple as checkpoints or MM start block tweaks) you will declare victory and move on, right?

I don't think it's a bad attack.  Thanks for giving everybody the heads-up.

Does anybody else think this anouncement is just a crude attempt to drive the price down.
announcing this does not increase but reduce the likely hood of a successful double spend.

It might encourage more NMC miners to commit more hash to the network thus creating coins quicker plus cause panic selling.

Or to reduce Bitcoin hashing power...

^^ Your assholeness is explained... Learnt it with your boss, hein?

It could be, but I'm not taking any chances.
And by the way, if we all mine them for a few days, merged mining will do the rest.

Notifying exchanges doesn't prevent monetary loss. If the rewrite occurs then the exchange will end up with a different balance of namecoins compared to the balance held in the exchange database. Loss will occur due to the exchange losing the coins but still having the users balance reflect what they originally deposited. Even adjusting for the blockchain reorganization the exchange loses in time and effort to fix up transactions and deal with irate users who have lost coins.

The only way for an exchange to avoid this is to close.

I really hope this is just a stunt to get more people mining namecoins out of sympathy.
This way we get to 19200 quicker.If not, I hope the attacker miners catches fire!  >:(
  

Didn't artforz's exploit rely on the geitz method of calculating difficulty adjustments using the times on blocks? I don't think namecoin does this does it?

So I take it you didn't learn anything from the test net?

And this same clown is begging you to make a GG exchange in another thread.  LOL it doesn't get much better than this! 

HI MY NAME IS BITCOINEXPRESS!  HEY DOUBLEC, I'M GOING TO STEAL FROM YOU BUT CAN YOU PLEASE SET UP AN EXCHANGE SO I CAN SELL MY GG COINS? K THX.

I still don't see the point. There is a vulnerability, and a fix is implemented, it will be activated at block number 19200. If you want to test it, why don't you test the network after merged mining is in place? This way, you will not be doing something you already know the result of. What will be gained if the network is rushed for an update? I'm at a loss here. Looks like it's more of a social experiment than a technical one.


1) Protection is developed and you are not testing it.
2) Merged mining will make this unfeasible if it isn't faulty itself. Better test it instead of preventing.
3) That's exactly what the developers did here. They developed new technology instead of bloating the system with workarounds.

I don't see what you do as offensive but still, I don't see how it will accomplish what you claim it will.

in the name of science =p

Could you let us know would you then REVERT damage made if attack would be successful?
Having a few NMC, not a big deal, just curious.

Really interesting project. I wish you good luck with that.

Are you going to post the results and your findings in this topic? I'm really interested in following that.

Why not Ixcoin instead of Namecoin?

Well, personally, I'd prefer to see flaccidcoin stepped on due to general grating attitude of "We fixed up MAJOR VULNERABILITY IN BITCOINSIZ, LOLZ" the SolidCoin dude demonstrated, but I guess it's too low hanging a fruit or something...

Seriously, use ixcoin.  It's already dead and namecoin has a patch coming already.
IMO using namecoin, the only coin that actually has a function, is a shithead move.

Where did I say I'd ignore you? I'm taking your warning and closing down my exchanges.

Where can I get a windows namecoin client/wallet?  

I bought some on the bitparking exchange and didn't mine them myself.

Or what is the best option?

Sell them.

Any namecoins held that were mined after block 10,000 will cease to exist entirely.
Any namecoins transfered after 10,000 will disappear and go back to whoever owned them at block 10,000.


Anybody want to bet on how many namecoins BEX owned at block 10k?
Of course, he'll also be generating many thousand new coins during this attack.

The namecoin exchanges are closed for trading... and I don't imagine if they were not that anybody is looking to buy.


Like I said I didn't mine them and I have no idea when they were mined.  I would just like to keep them in a safe spot in case they are old enough that they won't just go *poof*... 

And if they do does anyone have the real name and address of this cocksucker that wants to have his experiments with others people money?    >:(

Store 'em on your computer.
If they were transfered to you on or before block 10k you get to keep 'em.
If not, they go bye bye.

I doubt it, he's still posting.

That's what I am trying to do...  please see my original post.  I am looking for a windows client/wallet.
Or is there a trusted online wallet I could use? 

I love this experiment, also people need to stop complaining namecoins are experimental which implies they are temporary and so you have no expectation of value from them. They can disappear any day.

You can't simulate amazing results, you must test them in a production environment. Any computer scientist would agree.

oh look.

i'll join the attacking party.
just for teh lulz.

;D

Bitcoins are also experimental even in the words of Gavin Andresen. So would you advocate an attack on the bitcoin network too if someone had enough hashing power to kill the network? Something tells me you would be against it.

I would say the same thing, bitcoin software is experimental/untested and implies no warranty.

Hmm then I would advocate that you as well as BitcoinEXpress make plans to attack the Bitcoin network.

Start amassing TH/s of processing power so Bitcoin can be sure to be a safe network to be vested in.

...

Right, it's too much work to accumulate that much power for BitcoinEXpress or you.

Merged mining was just around the corner and this BS claim that bitcoin supporters and developers are taking too long and are leaving their network open to an outsider attack.

So much for the invisible hand.

I'm in for the ride, kudos to them for making it public

ArtForz himself gave us the solution too, fixings the blocks time-stamp from devel view and the second one that was not stated can be that every peer maintains it's already downloaded "ledger" and stops transacting.
Remember we know very little when it comes to bitcoin protocol but they will be majority for a small time-span and working on a fork after all. My client will definitively not be accepting a ~9000 block reset if i don't re-download the whole blockchain.
Having block hashes included into main bitcoin client was a good idea for bitcoin after all, heh

Hope vinced would look into it and don't freakout ppl, as long as one peer with the honest ledger (blockchain) exist on the network you will not lose your coins or domains.

well, if he kills ixcoin, solidcoin, i0coin, and gg, and only bitcoin remains a viable crypto-currency, then BTC prices will rise due to its security over all the other chains

in fact, it might be the invisible hand killing all the copy-cat chains that didn't change enough of the code to really secure their place as the bitcoin successor

Well I for one am soured on all crypocurrencies including bitcoin. Especially if no one has a solution for me for storing my namecoins on a windows machine. 
I can't see me being able to install and learn linux in a few days. 

If I lose them I will be selling all my btc soon after.  I don't care if this some how proves bitcoin is secure... I am just depressed
by all of it and want out even if I take more of a loss.

I hope the pain you are inflicting on others is keeping you entertained BitcoinEXpress. 

This. SolidCoin just needs to go away.

lol, you should not be here if you can't stand the pressure, sell me all your bitcoins right now and go play with gold or something else

They'll stop playing with this made up block chain eventually, yes?  At that point, won't the "honest nodes" regain control and then all will be restored to normal?  Don't we just need to ride out the storm?

Guess you could move them into bitparking and trust doublec's monitoring and check point lock in.  

As for a windows client, only current one I know of is  the build at http://www.wuala.com/jbw9/pub/Bitcoin/namecoin/nc0.3.24.61/win32.7z/ , however that has no locked in checkpoints.

I would suggest using Multicoin-exp , as an update to the namecoin config file with a lockin will be coming soon.  You would need to be a bit comfortable using the cli with either of these.
(  http://www.wuala.com/jbw9/pub/Bitcoin/multicoin/MultiCoin-exp/src/ has some *.exe in it for windows built). You would want to make sure you updated to the latest  http://exchange.beertokens.info/docs/multicoin/bitcoin.conf.namecoin  and be ready to either add or update again when a checkpoint gets added.


Maybe Lolcust would be willing to package up his console interface for namecoin usage?

Maybe I don't understand how this whole thing works, but I thought that as long as 50% power was regained by honest nodes, then eventually, the only accepted chain would be the longest accurate one and the alternative made up one with fake transactions would just go away... yes?

Don't keep them in bitparking. It'll be shutting down all namecoin transactions in a few days or block 19000, whichever comes first. If the attack succeeds all namecoins will be considered lost, the exchange will be closed permanently. If it fails the exchange will reopen for withdrawals. If the network hits 19,200 and there is a reasonable hash rate going then I'll consider reopening trades.

If you are successful in resetting the blockchain to ~10,000, then my namecoins will seize to exist. What is your plan to reverse this fact once you're done with your testing? I paid real money for the namecoins that I bought. If you don't reverse the consequences of your test once you're done, you will in fact have taken real money from me because the namecoins I had in my wallet will have seized to exist, and the new ones that will have been created instead, will be in your wallet.

My namecoins are in this block: http://explorer.dot-bit.org/a/NEuKQ4uJPRrE7Bf5TmYAByhHieeFqLzYrd

Will you be transferring the same amount of namecoins to that address once your test is over?

He believes your loss is in the name of "science".

Good luck with that.

The vandals dont care what they wreck. Even if it creates actual victims.

Although I have nmc to loose ~1000 I think this experiment has it's merits.

NMC is not really used for anything namespace related as of now, My take is that it had a bad start and it deserve to be used as a guinea pig.

as for iocoin & al, I bet even my mom has enough Ghash to fuck em up.

I'm buying them at Ruxum.

Seriously, btcEspresso, what you don't like about merged mining?
The solution is already implemented, you just don't want to wait that long. Come on...10 days for everybody changing their code? Some people even said that 19200 was too soon.
The solution...Merged mining since 19000 ?
And you think your attack is good for bitcoin? Bitcoin's operating costs would be reduced with merged mining.
Why destroying the only chain that:

1) Is not promoted as a currency.
2) Has a very useful feature that the community didn't want to be inserted in bitcoin's chain.
3) Will reduce the costs of the network relative to its security.

Merged mining is wonderful, Satoshi proposed it and could be bitcoin's salvation if the "mining after monetary inflation stops will be a tragedy of the commons" theory is true.

And again, what will you find out that you can't in a test chain? That the same can be done even against a bigger chain?

This is going to be bad to bitcoin advocates. "See this chain that has been destroyed? Bitcoin relies on the same technology. But hey, put your money in because it's secure." If you destroy namecoin, I wouldn't expect bitcoin prices to rise. The world would take it as "exchanges, windows computers and now the very chain is hackeable".
You're attacking bitcoin's credibility here too.

Also, where's ArtForz ? Does he hate merged mining too. Is he one of these fools that think that's parasiting bitcoin?

When children stop dicking around trying to wreck things you can actually do something positive by going to reddit and voting http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/kcxdk/if_reddit_accepts_bitcoin_for_reddit_gold_i_will/

Getting reddit to accept bitcoin for reddit gold would do more than this effort to "help bitcoin."

I would be put off by the community, not cryptocurrencies. :)

Looks like someone posted a windows binary with added checkpoints. You might want to give it a try (though I can't vouch for them):

http://dot-bit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1926#p1926

After downloading the blockchain and receiving your namecoins, backup the blockchain and wallet data until this spectacle is over.


You don't expect the technology to come and knock down the status quo in mere months do you? It took Bitcoin two years to become mainstream and it's still a failed experiment with your metrics.

Guys, the issue is not the attack itself. I think an attack like this can be beneficial, even if it disrupts network's operations. The problem is, they are trying to exploit something that's already been fixed, because that's the only attack they have. The experiment will not prove anything from the security perspective, it will however show the mobility of Namecoin users, which is IMO not a very valuable information.

now this is just childish.
It resembles kids atitudes when they just want to destroy others projects and accomplish nothing of their own.

I've got 1GH/s i can turn to namecoin while they play their stupid game...

I think begging and pleading is counterproductive. If begging is our "security", we have NO security. What needs to be done is trying to prevent the attack and/or regaining control afterwards. I'm more interested in regaining control, since we probably won't have the luxury of warning with possible attack on Bitcoin someday.

Bitcoin has blockchain checkpoints with every new client version, I'm assuming Namecoin does too. If it does, I'm wondering how will it be possible to rewrite blocks down to 10000? I thought checkpoints are there to prevent it?

How do we regain control? We obviously need to have valid blockchain backup and bootstrap from it afterwards. We would need to make a new namecoin client version and persuade users to update it. Will there be any problems doing any of that?

It would be trivial to patch the client and create a save point, we don't even have to mark it now, we could do it later by looking up the block on blockexplorer or somesuch history. Get a hash, code in an exception.

The /issue/ is getting the entirety or at least 51% legitimate miners to download the new client at the same time frame of a day or two. (otherwise the new patched client will get rejected by the 'corrupted client chain' seeing that as the longest chain still based on their rules)

Uhh, if someone can do this to the Bitcoin network, then the Bitcoin network is already dead? I mean, the whole proof-of-work thing is designed to make it economically unfeasible to attack - if it turns out there's a way to make it viable, then the idea is doomed no matter what happens. Any person(s) being "against it" or not is completely irrelevant. It's just a bit like crying "no fair" when someone's robbing you at gunpoint.

I'm surprised users like the one who's threatening and damaging the Bitcoin community like this, gets room to speak on this forum.

I agree magnet, this crap makes btc coin look like a joke. This whole forum reeks right now. There is a point to free speech and there is a point to trying to run a business friendly forum. Do we want the childish people here? What is the point of the newbie area, if we let people like bitcoinexpress troll the entire forum with his childish attacks?

As a business owner, I care if this sort of thing is possible. I'd rather some jack-off boasting about it in advance, than someone just silently doing it for the lulz.

I'm (positively) surprised. I don't condone what he's doing, but refusing to speak to him will not make the attack not happen. He would simply do it anyway. We can still do whatever we can to stop him from succeeding. Having a direct line of communication to your enemy is mutually beneficial.

Can someone record a screencast of the attack and post it to youtube? It would be interesting to watch the video afterwards in case there are some lessons that could be learned. There was a guy who recorded the Mt. Gox first incident when the prices fell to below one usd. It was interesting to watch his reaction and comments. That time it was only a fluke that he could get in on tape. This time we could be prepared and have analyzing software running and ready for the 19001 block (when the attack is scheduled).

Um, no, and in fact "this thing" (the "blocks from the future/blocks into the past" technique specifically, not the fact that a person with 51+% of a net can break some stuff) is verily patchable, as Geist illustrates.

Wow, stop being crybabies and start securing Namecoin.

Yeah, the guy is going to punch you in the face really hard, but he's kind enough to tell you a couple days before. Use that time to prepare yourself, and find a way to defend that chain. How can you defend Namecoin? I don't know, but one thing sure, whining against the attack doesn't help, and the time you use to whine is time that's not used to find a solution.

I didn't really care that much of Namecoin before, and now I find it completely irrelevant if the only way of defense that its users find is to whine.

He makes a serious profit by mining new chains very early and then selling his coins for BTC while they are in bubble price. Merged mining will undermine his power if new chains start coming with merged mining enabled from block 1 and pool ready. I think that's the reason.