Co-ordinated DDoS on multiple mining pools

[marcus_of_augustus]

and the abnormal ramp on hash-power before the last difficulty rise coincidence?

Is it possible some well-organised entity is probing bitcoin network for weaknesses ... the mining pool attacks are most definitely co-ordinated.

Gathering network intel before speaking with lead developer?

[1714153138]

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[FreeMoney]

Where did you get your data on the ramp up?

[marcus_of_augustus]

Where did you get your data on the ramp up?

http://bitcoinwatch.com/

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

[rezin777]

I don't know, but I wish I did.

I hope some miners learn to have backup plans for when their pool goes down so the network can laugh at such an attack.

A coordinated attack against the major mining pools will leave most miners clueless.

Every pooled miner should be capable of solo mining at the proverbial flip of a switch. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. Many don't really care about the health of the network, they care about a quick, easy buck. (Not realizing the quick easy buck might go away if the network is vulnerable to attacks.)

[anewbie]

The attack doesn't seem very well-informed.

Slush's web interface was having serious problems hours before miners using slash's pool were unable to get work.

Of course, it's been almost an hour since a miner pointed at slash's pool could get work, from my network node anyway.

EDIT: fix misspelling of Slush

[FreeMoney]

Where did you get your data on the ramp up?

http://bitcoinwatch.com/

The ramp up the reported spiked after the difficulty increased. It wasn't real, but only an effect from their bad formula. They assume current difficulty backward past the increase and get a wrong number until enough time has passed to get the inaccurate assumption out of their equation.

But maybe something is going on now. Deepbit is gone?

[FreeMoney]

I don't know, but I wish I did.

I hope some miners learn to have backup plans for when their pool goes down so the network can laugh at such an attack.

A coordinated attack against the major mining pools will leave most miners clueless.

Every pooled miner should be capable of solo mining at the proverbial flip of a switch. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. Many don't really care about the health of the network, they care about a quick, easy buck. (Not realizing the quick easy buck might go away if the network is vulnerable to attacks.)

Surely anyone with much power is smart enough to switch to individual mining automatically, no?

[yunk3r]

I don't know, but I wish I did.

I hope some miners learn to have backup plans for when their pool goes down so the network can laugh at such an attack.

A coordinated attack against the major mining pools will leave most miners clueless.

Every pooled miner should be capable of solo mining at the proverbial flip of a switch. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. Many don't really care about the health of the network, they care about a quick, easy buck. (Not realizing the quick easy buck might go away if the network is vulnerable to attacks.)

i will give you that maybe most of use miners dont know how to go solo, but most of use have already switched to different pools, and i have multiply batch scrips so i can switch to a different pool at any time.

[rezin777]

Surely anyone with much power is smart enough to switch to individual mining automatically, no?

These are people who pay 3% for lack of variance and a payment button when there are lower and zero fee pools out there. I think you give too much credit.

Today when Deepbit first went down, we had only two blocks in 55 minutes.

127555    2201f7d916...    2011-05-29 22:41:30    43    1472.65095723    21.143
127554    15fa32c760...    2011-05-29 22:13:38    37    877.09812426    23.145
127553    1de06a4a0a...    2011-05-29 21:46:22    47    2052.27689526    17.552

[rezin777]

i will give you that maybe most of use miners dont know how to go solo, but most of use have already switched to different pools, and i have multiply batch scrips so i can switch to a different pool at any time.

That's why I said a coordinated attack against the major mining pools. Meaning switching to another pool will be useless. How many major pools are there? 5?

[yunk3r]

there are more then 5 pools. also there is one that uses ipv6. im not sure, but would that make a ddos harder if the computers on in the botnet were not able to connect to ipv6 networks.

[rezin777]

there are more then 5 pools.

Which is why I said MAJOR mining pools. You might be able to argue 6.

Deepbit
Slush
BTCMine
BTCGuild
Eligius
Bitcoinpool

The rest are small enough that I'd bet there are solo miners with more hashing power.

[AntiVigilante]

there are more then 5 pools.

Which is why I said MAJOR mining pools. You might be able to argue 6.

Deepbit
Slush
BTCMine
BTCGuild
Eligius
Bitcoinpool

The rest are small enough that I'd bet there are solo miners with more hashing power.

Get ready for "towncoins".

[darbsllim]

Subscribed - is there any guide out there for mining solo as a backup?

[rezin777]

Subscribed - is there any guide out there for mining solo as a backup?

http://www.newslobster.com/random/how-to-get-started-using-your-gpu-to-mine-for-bitcoins-on-windows

This is an older article, but it should be enough to get you on the right track.

[Dobrodav]

Here is some manual for GUI miner -

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=10438.msg149818#msg149818

[M4v3R]

The problem is - when you have hash rate < 1 GH/s solo mining is very risky - you could not get a block in months. That's why we use pools in the first place. Resolution of this problem is probably to make private pools with some other miners to get at least one block a day. This way no evil person will know you're there and the variance is much lower.

[FreeMoney]

The problem is - when you have hash rate < 1 GH/s solo mining is very risky - you could not get a block in months. That's why we use pools in the first place. Resolution of this problem is probably to make private pools with some other miners to get at least one block a day. This way no evil person will know you're there and the variance is much lower.

That's a good idea. The pool could not even exist until the attack.

I think over time more and varied pools will emerge, with 144 blocks a day you could easily have 50 pools that average a block a day. But also pools could have agreements with each other to swap percents.

[rebuilder]

Is it possible to have a decentralized pool, or is a central authority required to ensure miners are honest?

[Dobrodav]

No any authority approval not required.

[theymos]

Is it possible to have a decentralized pool, or is a central authority required to ensure miners are honest?

It is possible to have a decentralized pool, but IMO building it would be a waste of time, since it will be too expensive to be a full Bitcoin node not too far in the future, and participants in a decentralized pool must be full nodes. A decentralized pool also requires a great deal of bandwidth itself, since all peers must understand the complete state of the pool (as far as I can tell).

One possible design:
- Each miner broadcasts all of the low-difficulty shares they win, which is used to calculate proper ratios for every participant.
- Each miner works on its own block. The coinbase transaction pays out according to ratios that it calculates. Each miner chooses which transactions to include according to its own rules.
- Miners broadcast their block headers, coinbase transactions, and Merkle branches for their coinbase transactions to the entire pool. The pool doesn't need to know which other transactions they include.
- When you receive a header+coinbase, you examine the payout ratios, and if you agree with them, you add the person who sent it to your own coinbase transactions for payout.

[hazek]

This way no evil person will know you're there and the variance is much lower.

Seriously? Evil vs good? You're really going to spin this?

Cut the bullshit please.

[hazek]

As for the DDoSing I'm split.

I already made a post about the danger of some pool getting too big and getting potentially dangerous so I like the fact that that's getting stopped. But as someone who believes in property rights and nonaggression principle I cannot condone using force to achieve it.

[airdata]

Is that what was going on last night when Slush and Deepbit both appeared to be down at the same time?

[lizthegrey]

Is it possible to have a decentralized pool, or is a central authority required to ensure miners are honest?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ciKH3M8WYS49ywz08beXtvpCm2wVGdzU7waKwcn_uaU/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CJTqyOMF#

[lizthegrey]

It is possible to have a decentralized pool, but IMO building it would be a waste of time, since it will be too expensive to be a full Bitcoin node not too far in the future, and participants in a decentralized pool must be full nodes. A decentralized pool also requires a great deal of bandwidth itself, since all peers must understand the complete state of the pool (as far as I can tell).

If you trust one person to distribute payouts, and you use a DHT with small replication (say, 10) rather than full replication, it's not quite so bad.

[AntiVigilante]

As for the DDoSing I'm split.

I already made a post about the danger of some pool getting too big and getting potentially dangerous so I like the fact that that's getting stopped. But as someone who believes in property rights and nonaggression principle I cannot condone using force to achieve it.

I'm for the non-initiation principle and the cessation of hostilities ASAP principle.

DDoS does not damage property. It only interferes with business. The result at worst is a delay of service.

Intrusion however is a different story. But that too can be minimal.