Can miners scam their pool?

[Hakkane]

Hello guys,

I have a theoretical question. I am sure it is impossible, as otherwise pools would be a ruin, but I am curious to know how it is prevented. Many people is concerned that his/her pool is hiding some of the mined blocks, mining them to the only profit of the pool owner. But, is the opposite also possible?

Let's consider an evil miner, with their gear pointed to a pool. He sends the shares (hashes close to the block solution) to the pool, and get a proportional profit from the other miners that solve blocks. But if that miner find the solution of the block, instead of sending it to the pool, he retains that hash and uses it to mine the whole block to himself (solo mining), in a selfish way.

How pools prevent this situation? Thanks in advance!

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[-ck]

Not possible, what you are mining is to create a block into the pool's wallet address. You can't change it after the fact (and this question is asked about once per month).

[jonnybravo0311]

The question as asked can't be done; however, change the last bit from keeping the block for yourself to not submitting the solution at all and you've just described a block withholding attack.

[Hakkane]

Ok. Thanks a lot. Then, I understand that the wallet of the pool is included in the hashing operation miners have to perform. Thus, if the destination wallet is to be changed, the hash that solved the block is not valid anymore.

I haven't seen this question in the time I've been around here, but if it is a frequent question, please -ck, feel free to erase this thread 

[trendax]

In a different scenario to the OP. One miner or a group could send garbage to the pool and cause a denial of service for other users.
Would the attacker be considered scamming the pool if they were leveraging accepted shares while others suffered?

[kano]

In a different scenario to the OP. One miner or a group could send garbage to the pool and cause a denial of service for other users.
Would the attacker be considered scamming the pool if they were leveraging accepted shares while others suffered?

Take a lot of miners to cause problems ...