Could a "moderate" attack to Bitcoin help on the long term?

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Please don't shout at me, since this it is a pure speculative (and crazily provocative) idea...

I'm thinking that a small scale attack to Bitcoin could help the user base adopt the habit of timely upgrades.

For example, 3 months have past since CVE-2012-3789 was issued and still 40% of the network is running v0.6.2!!

Why is people so slow at upgrading?
Do the same thing happens in other open source projects?

If someone attacked Bitcon, not a big panic but just some nodes going down here and there, the price won't go down (maybe just a few cents) then everyone will pay much more attention to upgrades...

Ohh, I miss the times when SolidCoin threatened to take down Bitcoin... 


PS: Please don't misinterpret: this is just speculation!

[knight22]

There should be an automated warning for upgrade incorporated in each clients. That should help people to be aware of new versions.

[kjj]

There should be an automated warning for upgrade incorporated in each clients. That should help people to be aware of new versions.

There are, sorta.  The antique pre-QT node that I run at home for my own amusement has been whining about potential DOS attacks for like a year now.

[MysteryMiner]

I don't use newer Bitcoin version because:
1. Bitcoin-Qt interface sucks hard. And there is nothing that I can reasonably do about it.
2. Old Bitcoin version allow me to send without any transaction fees. I dont trust the no-tx mod of newer Bitcoin.

Go ahead, attack me!

[cbeast]

If people are leaving themselves vulnerable and a big player jumps in, then it will be a good opportunity for the big player to make some easy bitcoins.

[flatfly]

I guess my 2^256 Deep Space Vagabond app/"game" could be viewed as a (very gentle) theoretical attack on Bitcoin

[CIYAM]

1. Bitcoin-Qt interface sucks hard. And there is nothing that I can reasonably do about it.
2. Old Bitcoin version allow me to send without any transaction fees. I dont trust the no-tx mod of newer Bitcoin.

I didn't really like the UI change to QT initially but I must say now that it has grown on me (and has improved with the last couple of versions). Also there is no problem with setting the tx fee to zero.

Perhaps you might consider giving it another try?

[Diapolo]

1. Bitcoin-Qt interface sucks hard. And there is nothing that I can reasonably do about it.
2. Old Bitcoin version allow me to send without any transaction fees. I dont trust the no-tx mod of newer Bitcoin.

I didn't really like the UI change to QT initially but I must say now that it has grown on me (and has improved with the last couple of versions). Also there is no problem with setting the tx fee to zero.

Perhaps you might consider giving it another try?

We are working hard there and every valuable suggestion on how to make it better over time will be looked at. A good place to give us some input is opening an issue ticket on Github: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues.

Dia

[hazek]

Actually I think it's good not everyone instantly updates to the newest version because this way if ever it should happen that the newest version was changed in anyway deviating from some rules or adding new rules we'd still have a lot of people who wouldn't enforce those and the Bitcoin network would stay intact.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

A month is more than enough to test and upgrade. Nevertheless, currently, Bitcoin users take 5 months to upgrade to 90% or so.