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Alternate cryptocurrencies => Altcoin Discussion => Topic started by: eternalgloom on January 09, 2019, 10:41:58 AM



Title: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: eternalgloom on January 09, 2019, 10:41:58 AM
I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.

Quote
Ethereum $ETH▲1.15% Classic, one of the most popular forks of the second most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap has suffered a 51-percent attack.

After Chinese blockchain security firm SlowMist raised the alarm, an analyst at CoinNess dug a little deeper. The analyst found that a private mining pool had managed to increase its hash power to 3,263 GH/s, making it – temporarily – the most powerful mining pool at around 11:00am UTC on 6 January.

After this brief spike in power, the mining pool returned to its normal state of around 300 GH/s. However, ten hours later the same thing happened again, and the pool’s hash rate began to climb. At the time CoinNess’ article was published the illicit mining pool’s power equated to around 63-percent of the total network hash rate.

Shortly after these attacks Coinbase paused all Ethereum Classic transactions, it initially detected that around 88,500 ETC ($460,000) had been double-spent. However, the cryptocurrency exchange has since uncovered another 12 attacks that “included double spends, [now] totaling 219,500 ETC ($1.1 million).”

Source: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/08/ehtereum-classic-51-percent-attack/

At least 14 double spends were detected!


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: JimmyNg90 on January 09, 2019, 11:01:14 AM
This is a result of weak POW network. The number of participants in network is small enough to be manipulated by hackers. And almost altcoins have to face this problem.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: none of us on January 09, 2019, 11:13:39 AM
that really is not good news for ethereum classic. i wonder what will happen next to the blockchain after this attack. i could almost imagine that could be the end of ethereum classic.  :(


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: BitcoinGirl.Club on January 09, 2019, 11:29:24 AM
<snip>
I read the news somewhere then I saw the tweet from Charlie Lee
Quote
This is a thought-provoking observation. 🤔

By definition, a decentralized cryptocurrency must be susceptible to 51% attacks whether by hashrate, stake, and/or other permissionlessly-acquirable resources.

If a crypto can't be 51% attacked, it is permissioned and centralized.

This gives me a thought that he has a point but what will give me security that my coins will not get hacked?


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: eternalgloom on January 09, 2019, 11:29:43 AM
This is a result of weak POW network. The number of participants in network is small enough to be manipulated by hackers. And almost altcoins have to face this problem.

Well, most other coins actually have measures in place to protect them against 51% attacks.
Yesterday, I saw a post on /r/cryptocurrency that stated it would only cost two times the attack cost of the ETC attack, to bring down the BCH network.

As much as I dislike BCH, this was factually incorrect, since BCH has a rolling block checkpoint system to prevent this.
https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoin-cash-abcs-rolling-10-block-checkpoints/

Other coins also have measures against 51% attacks, here are some examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/896kjt/about_51_attack/

https://dailyhodl.com/2019/01/08/the-true-cost-of-51-attacks-on-bitcoin-ethereum-xrp-bitcoin-cash-litecoin-and-the-crypto-verse/


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: VanDeinsberg12 on January 09, 2019, 11:49:05 AM
This is a result of weak POW network. The number of participants in network is small enough to be manipulated by hackers. And almost altcoins have to face this problem.

Well, most other coins actually have measures in place to protect them against 51% attacks.
Yesterday, I saw a post on /r/cryptocurrency that stated it would only cost two times the attack cost of the ETC attack, to bring down the BCH network.

As much as I dislike BCH, this was factually incorrect, since BCH has a rolling block checkpoint system to prevent this.
https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoin-cash-abcs-rolling-10-block-checkpoints/

Other coins also have measures against 51% attacks, here are some examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/896kjt/about_51_attack/

https://dailyhodl.com/2019/01/08/the-true-cost-of-51-attacks-on-bitcoin-ethereum-xrp-bitcoin-cash-litecoin-and-the-crypto-verse/
That makes me believe if with all of these problems caused by 51% attack and POW needs a lot of correction.
All of these 51% caused by ASIC miners.

Verge has experienced it many times

https://cryptoslate.com/verge-victim-to-yet-another-51-attack-xvg-down-15-in-past-24-hours/  ::)


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: icalical on January 09, 2019, 11:49:21 AM
This is bad not just for Ethereum Classic but for all of the cryptocurrency out there, that they actually still has one big flaw. The fact that it can overhash the 51% of the Ethereum Classic POW that we all know it is not a small POW network, it means most of other cryptos might be able to be attacked too. And the worse thing is that, this attack happen when crypto are about to recover from bear market, I hope it will not affect much.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: bitmover on January 09, 2019, 11:51:56 AM
Although there are many measures against a 51% attack, the only way to really protect the network is increasing the hast rate.

However,not all shitcoins in the world can have a high hash rate.

I believe the solution for those small projects is a different algorithm, such as pos

Ethereum classic should be rushing Casper implementation now, stepping ahead of Vitalik's blockchain (which is only delaying Casper for months and years)


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: levyashin on January 09, 2019, 11:54:49 AM
I think this means death for weak pow networks not for ethereum classic only.

After this, i won't touch any weak pow blockchains.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: rricksu on January 09, 2019, 12:04:36 PM
I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.

Quote
Ethereum $ETH▲1.15% Classic, one of the most popular forks of the second most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap has suffered a 51-percent attack.

After Chinese blockchain security firm SlowMist raised the alarm, an analyst at CoinNess dug a little deeper. The analyst found that a private mining pool had managed to increase its hash power to 3,263 GH/s, making it – temporarily – the most powerful mining pool at around 11:00am UTC on 6 January.

After this brief spike in power, the mining pool returned to its normal state of around 300 GH/s. However, ten hours later the same thing happened again, and the pool’s hash rate began to climb. At the time CoinNess’ article was published the illicit mining pool’s power equated to around 63-percent of the total network hash rate.

Shortly after these attacks Coinbase paused all Ethereum Classic transactions, it initially detected that around 88,500 ETC ($460,000) had been double-spent. However, the cryptocurrency exchange has since uncovered another 12 attacks that “included double spends, [now] totaling 219,500 ETC ($1.1 million).”

Source: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/08/ehtereum-classic-51-percent-attack/

At least 14 double spends were detected!

I thought really that cryptocurrency isn't prone to incident like this, hacking and stolen coins. But I guess, the number of miners affects the security of a coin in a sense.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: CryptoAlphaStar on January 09, 2019, 12:18:29 PM
This is the first time we are seeing a top cryptocurrency being 51% attacked succesfully, I think.
I didn't think it was possible in practice. Not good news.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: rasulibragimavic on January 09, 2019, 12:43:57 PM
This is very bad for Ethereum classic and for Its network I noticed that the development team is losing ground on the market and even read that they can no longer promote the project but maybe it's rumors. I hope they will cope with difficulties and everything will be fine.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: adam1230 on January 09, 2019, 12:52:29 PM
There are too many coins which has low hashrates and easyly manipulatable.
For now i think they are all focusing on GPU algo coins but  i know that there are much more coins to attack using asics.
POW is not the best solution for crypto.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: entebah on January 09, 2019, 12:53:58 PM
This is bad not just for Ethereum Classic but for all of the cryptocurrency out there, that they actually still has one big flaw. The fact that it can overhash the 51% of the Ethereum Classic POW that we all know it is not a small POW network, it means most of other cryptos might be able to be attacked too. And the worse thing is that, this attack happen when crypto are about to recover from bear market, I hope it will not affect much.
There are always obstacles that come when the market looks to be going up, but after reading the article about hacking that happened to ETH Classic really this is bad news for the entire Cryptocurrency, because if the ETH Classic can be broken down by hackers, it is possible to re-consume other Crypto victims again in this Crypto world.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: korean1999 on January 09, 2019, 01:46:36 PM
that really is not good news for ethereum classic. i wonder what will happen next to the blockchain after this attack. i could almost imagine that could be the end of ethereum classic.  :(
Looks like the market is not affected by this incident. Only ETC will face the danger that their project may die or the price of ETC will go down significantly. I believe that many ETC investors will lose trust and will panic sell in the near future


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: LeetPoolsOP on January 09, 2019, 07:05:58 PM
all that has happened to Ethereum classic over the past week is just terrible. I think that this coin will not exist in a few years.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: Lakai01 on January 09, 2019, 07:08:20 PM
Well, thats the problem coming with PoW ... if someone is able to get 51% of the mining power he or she can manipulate the blockchain at his own will. Very easy for lesser known coins, very hard for coins with big support like BTC.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: anjho.ace on January 09, 2019, 07:10:23 PM
This is the main reason why COINBASE delisted ETHEREUM CLASSIC on their wallet.
This must be fix soon before they will get back it. i hope that everything will be fix and get back to normal as ETC is a good one.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: boolog on January 09, 2019, 07:19:26 PM
I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.
Wow, this is again a lot of money, which were captured by the attack. Surely this will not be the last chain to be attacked. As soon as the people succeed and it is financially worthwhile, they will certainly continue.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: Pab on January 09, 2019, 07:29:13 PM
I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.

Quote
Ethereum $ETH▲1.15% Classic, one of the most popular forks of the second most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap has suffered a 51-percent attack.

After Chinese blockchain security firm SlowMist raised the alarm, an analyst at CoinNess dug a little deeper. The analyst found that a private mining pool had managed to increase its hash power to 3,263 GH/s, making it – temporarily – the most powerful mining pool at around 11:00am UTC on 6 January.

After this brief spike in power, the mining pool returned to its normal state of around 300 GH/s. However, ten hours later the same thing happened again, and the pool’s hash rate began to climb. At the time CoinNess’ article was published the illicit mining pool’s power equated to around 63-percent of the total network hash rate.

Shortly after these attacks Coinbase paused all Ethereum Classic transactions, it initially detected that around 88,500 ETC ($460,000) had been double-spent. However, the cryptocurrency exchange has since uncovered another 12 attacks that “included double spends, [now] totaling 219,500 ETC ($1.1 million).”

Source: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/08/ehtereum-classic-51-percent-attack/

At least 14 double spends were detected!

Not only Coinbase but several exchanges
I didn't see that kind of attack from long time
Mostly blockchain is protected from that kind of bad activity
It is only showing that ETC chain is poor need to be upgraded
There was that kind of attacks on Bitcoin but now Bitcoin chain is secure
Whatever to say bitcoin chain is most secure from all blockchains


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: disconnectme on January 09, 2019, 07:32:40 PM
The recent attack on ETC just give those advocating for POS shift more voice, the issue now is that most of these POW projects are useless because they have no usecase and no one will be willing to buy miners to back them up, if care is not talking this could be the trend this year because if ETC can be attacked successful what chance do small POW coins have


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: Mikcik on January 09, 2019, 07:43:37 PM
But the developer team of Ethereum Classic said that absolutely no 51% attack occurred. However, after having a double withdrawal order on January 5 on Coinbase, they proceeded to suspend the withdraw and deposit ETC. I think that happened 51% attacks


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: tonibyuzen on January 09, 2019, 08:30:07 PM
It's terrible every time I see the news again that a 51% attack has been committed. I think it may devalue the coin, in December I heard that the lead team that worked on ETC announced their departure due to insufficient funding. Do you still believe the coin will survive?


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: Lakai01 on January 10, 2019, 05:05:35 AM
This is the main reason why COINBASE delisted ETHEREUM CLASSIC on their wallet.
This must be fix soon before they will get back it. i hope that everything will be fix and get back to normal as ETC is a good one.
Thats impossible to fix in my opinion. The blockchain got manipulated because of the attack. A PoW based chain cant be protected from 51% attacks I think!


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: crzybilly on January 10, 2019, 05:14:16 AM
It is pretty sad that such hacker attacks are still taking place in our industry. We need to find a way out of this, because due to such actions, we are losing a lot of people from the crypto industry. Btw I think these double spends are going to be returned.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: Glen Hoddle on January 10, 2019, 09:55:17 AM
This is the main reason why COINBASE delisted ETHEREUM CLASSIC on their wallet.
This must be fix soon before they will get back it. i hope that everything will be fix and get back to normal as ETC is a good one.
Thats impossible to fix in my opinion. The blockchain got manipulated because of the attack. A PoW based chain cant be protected from 51% attacks I think!

It can and already has been done by Gulden (NLG)

The POW2 system uses POW and witnessing to validate blocks. To attack the Gulden blockchain you would theoretically need 71% of the hash rate and 71% of the coins locked in the witnessing system. Currently around 16% of all Gulden in circulation are witnessing meaning an attacker would need 71% of the hash rate (easy) and 71% of the witnessing amount i.e. they would have to go out and buy around a third of all the Gulden in circulation (impossible).

Full details here:

https://gulden.com/en#technology (https://gulden.com/en#technology)

These sorts of attacks are going to happen more and more and no coin is safe (not even bitcoin). What crypto investors need to understand is that if you invest in crypto you're investing in something that is not an investment grade product because your funds are not safe.

For those interested you really should read the Gulden whitepaper to see why POW and POS alone are not suitable to secure a blockchain. This is not pie in the sky theory. The system is operating and working right now.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: ElenaN on January 10, 2019, 01:36:12 PM
Nothing can be done about it, every decentralized platform has a huge risk of such an attack!


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: eternalgloom on January 10, 2019, 11:54:37 PM
But the developer team of Ethereum Classic said that absolutely no 51% attack occurred. However, after having a double withdrawal order on January 5 on Coinbase, they proceeded to suspend the withdraw and deposit ETC. I think that happened 51% attacks

There's been some very misleading news about this. Cointelegraph actually edited one of their articles to say that there wasn't a 51% attack, just like you mentioned.
After that article was released, then the news came out about the double spends on Coinbase.

Here's an accurate timeline of the events, quite a shitshow really...
https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-exchange-gateio-confirms-51-attack-on-ethereum-classic-promises-refunds

I'm actually going to quote the article, just in case they change it again.

Quote
Researchers from crypto exchange Gate.io report they have confirmed that a 51 percent attack successfully occurred on the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain. The company published an analysis of their findings Jan. 8.

Gate.io Research has published its analysis of ETC transactions on its platform during the alleged attack, claiming it has detected seven rollback transactions — four of which were reportedly conducted by the attacker, transferring a total of 54,200 ETC in total (worth $271,500 at press time).

Gate.io reports that the incident occurred over a period of 4 hours between 0:40 and 4:20 Jan.7, 2019 UTC, during which the transactions were normally confirmed on the blockchain and then subsequently invalidated after the malign network rollback. After providing details of three ETC addresses purportedly used by the attacker, Gate.io continues to explain:

    “Gate.io's censor successfully blocked [the] attacker's transactions at the beginning and submitted them to [a] manual exam. Unfortunately, during the 51% attack, all the transactions looked valid and confirmed well on the blockchain. The examiner passed the transactions. It caused about 40k ETC loss due to this attack.”

Gate.io states it will compensate its users’ losses, stating “Gate.io will take all the loss for the users.” The exchange also advises other crypto trading platforms to block transactions stemming from the identified suspect addresses. The exchange also states it has raised its ETC transaction confirmation number to 500 and launched a more robust 51 percent detection security mechanism.

Today, Jan. 9, Chinese blockchain security firm Slow Mist also published a report also confirming a 51 percent attack and containing and the same rollback transactions reported by Gate.io.

As previously reported, several major crypto exchanges — United States-based Coinbase and Japanese exchanges bitFlyer and Coincheck — have have all temporarily suspended withdrawals and deposits of ETC as early as Jan. 5. The exchanges all reportedly moved to respond to unusual hashpower activity indicating a potential 51 percent attack, as well as Coinbase’s own findings of double spending and “chain reorganizations.”

The ETC dev team initially responded by refuting that a 51 percent attack had taken place, stating that double spends had not been detected. At the time, they claimed that majority control over the network’s hashrate was “most likely selfish mining,” attributable to the testing of new 1,400/Mh ethash machines by application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) manufacturer Linzhi.

As reported, a 51 percent attack can occur on blockchains that use a proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm, and essentially entails a user or group seizing control of the majority of mining power to monopolize control over the network. This, in particular, can allow the threat actor to reverse transactions with the view to double spend — by transacting crypto for fiat currency, and then rolling back the deed to recuperate the spent crypto, while pocketing the fiat.

While the theoretical risk of majority attacks exists, practically seizing control of a large hashrate blockchain is widely considered to be prohibitively expensive at present. The PoW-based Bitcoin blockchain has not to date been compromised by a hijack of the network’s hashrate, but some developers have nonetheless made the case for investigating potential PoW change.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: Chibongvdg on January 11, 2019, 05:31:07 AM
This is only a game of big investors. They're making bad information to make the people panic and sell their assets. After the price drops, surely they will start buying in large quantities.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: kogozer714 on January 11, 2019, 06:12:10 AM
this is bad news for ETC holders. after knowing the ETC was stolen and how the continuation of the ETC in the future can still survive well in the market. and for the POW network you need to be questioned for the best security. this is not good news for all


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: el kaka22 on January 11, 2019, 01:51:41 PM
Does anyone know what happens to ETC now ? Like they were attacked and got 1.1 million stolen but what about now ? Is it gone ? Like will it be 1 satoshi and forgotton like some scam coin ? Or will it continue to operate and get traded in big exchanges and forget about this happened and try to make the 51% attack harder and just move on ?

I don't know if I will be ever capable of trusting ETC again and I haven't had any ETC in the past year but from now on I don't think I will ever even consider trading it let alone invest into it. Maybe they will start to crumble and not matter anymore in the short future, it would be weird to see investors still supporting a coin that basically got hacked and stolen because of the 51% attack because why would they support it when there are many other coins much more secure.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: tamango on January 11, 2019, 01:53:33 PM
this is not a good news and I think this poor POW could be a problem for most of altcoins, expecially ones that don't have big community and capitalisation.....


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: Kolikalex55 on January 11, 2019, 02:14:03 PM
The Ethereum classic losing ground and scares investors. I heard that the development team does not promote the project and there are people who left the project. The development team says that they tested ASIC but in fact it's very sad and I think that the attack took place.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: kikoy999 on January 13, 2019, 02:54:12 PM
This is a big problem those people who promote on this project also trusting for ethereum fork and the result is 100% scam and you can see the mainchat clearly deleted for newcomers who want to join.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: Hektur on January 13, 2019, 02:57:44 PM
That is why I don't invest into small coins, these coins do not have enough miners, so it is easy to buy enough hashrate and attack on those blockchain.


Title: Re: Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks
Post by: DanWalker on January 13, 2019, 02:59:07 PM
I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.

Quote
Ethereum $ETH▲1.15% Classic, one of the most popular forks of the second most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap has suffered a 51-percent attack.

After Chinese blockchain security firm SlowMist raised the alarm, an analyst at CoinNess dug a little deeper. The analyst found that a private mining pool had managed to increase its hash power to 3,263 GH/s, making it – temporarily – the most powerful mining pool at around 11:00am UTC on 6 January.

After this brief spike in power, the mining pool returned to its normal state of around 300 GH/s. However, ten hours later the same thing happened again, and the pool’s hash rate began to climb. At the time CoinNess’ article was published the illicit mining pool’s power equated to around 63-percent of the total network hash rate.

Shortly after these attacks Coinbase paused all Ethereum Classic transactions, it initially detected that around 88,500 ETC ($460,000) had been double-spent. However, the cryptocurrency exchange has since uncovered another 12 attacks that “included double spends, [now] totaling 219,500 ETC ($1.1 million).”

Source: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/08/ehtereum-classic-51-percent-attack/

At least 14 double spends were detected!

I'm shocked that there is no dump and ETS is still in TOP-20 at CMC and the volume is still pretty high. Don't you think guys that it's really terrible and ridiculous at the same time?