Bitcoin Forum

So I've heard there are botnets running lots of hash. Are there any confirmed major hash sources that are botnets?

Based on the hash of the botnets, they are making a killing, and there's nothing we can do about it, however if/when the ASIC rolls out in force, the botnets will no longer be a significant portion of the hash.

This stands to gain (ASIC) players an even higher % of the pie.

What Say Ye? Vote Above

Botnet operators need to be strung up on wires by their toenails and beaten with red-hot pokers.

ASICs will render everything else obsolete in time but botnets (which are already horribly inefficient) will be killed overnight and that includes other forms of malicious CPU mining (rogue system admins, employees "borrowing" company resources, hacked servers, etc).

Overpriced ASICs have a much greater risk to mining profitability than botnets.

Both can be broken just as easily by protocol tweaks.. Bip16 took a very large botnet out for months.

I still don't get it : why would they stop hashing when it costs them a grand total of 0 to keep going ?

Inconvenience perhaps ?

Because they will find something else more profitable. Spamming, pw hash breaking whatever.

Good point.

Sending Nigerian spam is much more profitable than mining say 0.1 BTC a day when ASIC hits !

I heard the space aliens are running lot of hash, but I think John Titor's crew from the future probably has them beat.  Do you think that the invention of quasi-protonic timelike hypercomputers in the upwhen will make the time traveler's advantage decisive or not?

Where's a legitimate ASIC Thread? I tried starting another in general hardware, but the consensus seems to be to let it die.

Legitimate ASIC thread? That's pretty much an oxymoron at this point. I think people suggested to let your thread die b/c you started off raising questions about BFL's coming ASIC that have been picked over 100x on this board already. There are lots of ASIC threads - check the FPGA subforum. Most of the discussion is about BFL's ASIC, and the threads are full of all kinds of speculation, emoting, and outright BS, but there's good stuff too. So much has been said about it already it's probably best to wade through the existing threads and find specific posts that interest you, then reply to those to get a conversation going.

@D&T,

I don't want to be rude but (also, don't take me wrong), that was the reason to you to sell "as fast as you can", your BFL Single?!

Look, I do not have any problems with that but! Now I'm thinking that I made a bad, bad business buying this BFL Single these days...

Who wants my BFL Single for 150 Bitcoins?! I sell it now! Never used!

Cheers!
Thiago

I'll give you 100BTC

No, thanks! 150 BTC including the shipment to your place.

There was an AMA on reddit once with a botnet operator who had 13-20GH/s from 12k of bots and estimated that 30% of btc network could be botnets. To what extent is it true? I don't know but already over a year ago people discussed this extensively on deepnet.

Quote of the day ;D

Only one mix up:

Botnet operators need to be strung up on wires by their red-hot pokers and beaten with....  ;)

You seem to envy them?  ;D

I'm not sure how you were able to confuse "envy" with "hate", but whatever.

To be honest I don't really care where the hashes come from, I just think the more hashes the better security the network has.
Mystery miner is my only exception, though, because they have 1.3TH and don't accept transactions into their blocks, making just over 1/10 of all Bitcoin blocks without transactions.

Why the hate then?

If BFL actually delivers products they announced with those specs and prices, no longer will anyone bother with using their botnets for mining bitcoins (unnecessary increased risk of detection, even after taking necessary precautions).

I wasn't hating because they were mining (it increases network security), but I was hating because of the principle of the thing, where the botnet owner has commandeered the resources of an unsuspecting user and is using them for his own gain, frequently at the cost of the user directly. The operator itself is nothing more than a lazy slob that can't be bothered to make an honest living.

Ok, I get your point.

But I still think some users do deserve being taken advantage of. Take HF skids for example, begging for t00lz to h4x det fb acc, what could be wrong with infecting them ;) Not that I'd encourage that but I'm not against either. As for the operator most of the stuff they do can't be considered 'making an honest living' but not all of them are lazy slobs (those who design them are quite clever), only those who buy tools without basic knowledge of how networks and Windows works.

what should botnets stop from using gpus, fpgas or asics .... just a matter of time and skills :) (with i don't have ...()

How is that even possible?

It is possible with some modifications to the code, I'm not too sure how.
Have a look at this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67634.0
Though it looks like recently he has stopped?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87185.0

Somone on the second thread made a good point that the network hashrate has stayed the same even though he has stopped, so he's probably in a pool. Deepbit's block solving rate also went up.

Botnet mining really isn't that profitable. Not everyone has good gfx cards and you will lose a lot of bots because of all the resources it takes mining 24/7. (Unless you have a afk miner, which cuts profits by a lot)

I've seen a botnet of roughly 2k bots (granted not 100% of bots weren't mining nor a 100% of the time) and he was making about 1btc a day. Not worth the risk IMO. Now if you got a bunch of gaming PCs I could see it turning semi-profitable. But not enough to be worth jail time.

1. Create botnet out of ASIC machines.
2.$$$Profit ?

2k bots... tiny botnet

hell... i know where to buy 2k bots for less than $100... that doesnt even constitute a botnet. Thats like a botstring.

lol

running hash? be a portion of the hash? hash sources?

smoking much hash? :-)

that's one of the best things on ASIC coming, botnet operators will be f***ed in the a**. The network power will be in hands of people that believe in the project and are willing to pay money for great mining equipment = good people.

Botnets will switch over to litecoin, if they haven't already, given litecoin's more CPU (and therefore botnet) friendly algorithm.

rendering litecoin worthless...

Someone is even trying to get others to write one for him:

http://www.freelancer.com/projects/PHP-C-Programming/Bitcoin-Litecoin-mining-Bot.html


*facepalm*

3 points:
- nigerian spam is surprisingly profitable (maybe not nigerian spam itself, but those kinds of mail do generate money)
- over time, botnet members will reinstall, get new PC's, whatever. so over time less and less PC's will generate BTC in a botnet. the thing right now is that its worth setting up new PC's, but in the future when ASIC's hit, you'd need around 1000 high-end CPU's hashing to get the equivalent of 1 BFL jalapeno. wich brings us to point 3:
- right now, if you have a single high-end GPU running, you'd have about the equivalent of 100 high-end CPU's, say there are 1000 PC's infected and you with your high-end GPU; you'd have a 1/11 share
when you get a single basic ASIC, you'd have the equivalent of 1000 PC's, so you get a 1/2 share of the total BTC mined*

so even though in theory it doesnt cost anything to upkeep that botnet, it will decrease over time in size, and the total share of the network is *way* lower than it is right now
ASIC's will kill botnets

*the numbers are somewhat accurate, but mostly serve as an example