Blockchain.info misreports origins (Was:Swiss University jumps into mining game)

[SgtSpike]

Oooh, here's more:

CSCS' main function is a so-called National User Lab. It is open to all Swiss researchers and their collaborators, who can get free access to CSCS' supercomputers in a competitive scientific evaluation process. In addition, the centre operates dedicated computing facilities for specific research projects and national mandates, e.g. weather forecasting. It is the national competence centre for high-performance computing and serves as a technology platform for Swiss research in computational science. [3]. CSCS is an autonomous unit of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) and closely collaborates with the local University of Lugano (USI).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_National_Supercomputing_Centre

According to that wiki page, it looks like that university has 604.52 teraflops of supercomputing power available to them.  For free for research purposes.

EDIT:  Sorry, I'll stop double-posting.  Found this:

Bitcoin "FLOPS" computation on bitcoinwatch

bitcoinwatch.com/ calculates PFLOPS of bitcoin network as: take number of Hashes/second (Terahashes/s of SHA256) and multiply by 12700 to get a "Single-precision FLOPS estimate". One hash calculation is considered as 6350 32-bit integer operations, and each integer operation is considered equal to two single-precision flops. Source of constants is: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=4689.0 (with reference to bincoinwatch's admin). Actual bitcoin mining contains no (or almost no) floating-point calculations.

So, going backwards, 604 / 12,700 = 0.475.  In other words, their 604 TFPS of supercomputers could only mine 48 GH/s, far lower than the numbers we are actually seeing would imply.

[cedivad]

So they have around 9% network hashing power...

How massive of a supercomputer would they have to use to get 2 TH/s?  And does anyone know if they HAVE a supercomputer at that university?

I guess that they are using AWS/some other cloud and redirecting the traffic to mask it.

EDIT, nevermind.

[crazyates]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112889

The new Mira Supercomputer does 8 petaflops. I did some quick napkin calculations, and I estimate that gets ~600GH/s.

[SgtSpike]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112889

The new Mira Supercomputer does 8 petaflops. I did some quick napkin calculations, and I estimate that gets ~600GH/s.

I agree.  But do they have access to said supercomputer?  And even if they did, it's only 1/4 of the estimated hashing power it is implied that they somehow have access to.

[gusti]

IIRC, this is the first attempted attack with source on a multi-million computing facility.
Will they succeed, or fail miserably ?

[HorseRider]

this is why we need asic mining rigs, cheap asic mining rigs.

[Raoul Duke]

It seems like Bitthief is not related to Bitcoins:

http://www.disco.ethz.ch/members/cdecker.html

"Tampering with Distributed Hash Tables"

This Cdecker: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=49 ?

[crazyates]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112889

The new Mira Supercomputer does 8 petaflops. I did some quick napkin calculations, and I estimate that gets ~600GH/s.

I agree.  But do they have access to said supercomputer?  And even if they did, it's only 1/4 of the estimated hashing power it is implied that they somehow have access to.

That's my point: even one of the fastest supercomputers in the world can barely get to 1/4 of what they're pushing. Now that's with CPUs, so if they were using Teslas (like those C2050s), they might be able to get to those numbers.

[SgtSpike]

this is why we need asic mining rigs, cheap asic mining rigs.

Yes, definitely part of the reason.  The other part being, preventing a malicious entity from developing their own ASIC and taking over the network because no one else has them.

[BC12345]

actually, this is really annoying now, since there are 9 of them

206.12.16.155
129.74.74.20
128.6.192.156
129.130.252.140
82.130.102.160 (on about 30 or 40 different ports)
137.99.11.86
130.253.21.123
147.102.3.117
129.130.252.141

whenever one connects, i get flooded with the ping fail

http://bgp.he.net/ip/206.12.16.155     -->BCnet
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.74.74.20       -->University of Notre Dame
http://bgp.he.net/ip/128.6.192.156     -->Rutgers University
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.130.252.140 -->Kansas State University
http://bgp.he.net/ip/82.130.102.160   -->Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
http://bgp.he.net/ip/137.99.11.86       -->University of Connecticut
http://bgp.he.net/ip/130.253.21.123   -->University of Denver
http://bgp.he.net/ip/147.102.3.117     -->National Technical University of Athens
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.130.252.141 -->Kansas State University
...

[Raoul Duke]

Except the Swiss and Greek IP's all others are PlanetLab(Codeen) public proxies.

[crazyates]

actually, this is really annoying now, since there are 9 of them

206.12.16.155
129.74.74.20
128.6.192.156
129.130.252.140
82.130.102.160 (on about 30 or 40 different ports)
137.99.11.86
130.253.21.123
147.102.3.117
129.130.252.141

whenever one connects, i get flooded with the ping fail

http://bgp.he.net/ip/206.12.16.155     -->BCnet
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.74.74.20       -->University of Notre Dame
http://bgp.he.net/ip/128.6.192.156     -->Rutgers University
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.130.252.140 -->Kansas State University
http://bgp.he.net/ip/82.130.102.160   -->Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
http://bgp.he.net/ip/137.99.11.86       -->University of Connecticut
http://bgp.he.net/ip/130.253.21.123   -->University of Denver
http://bgp.he.net/ip/147.102.3.117     -->National Technical University of Athens
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.130.252.141 -->Kansas State University

Anyone know of a link between all these different schools? Maybe some sort of cooperation to join their computers into a pool to try these double-charge transactions?

[RodeoX]

actually, this is really annoying now, since there are 9 of them

206.12.16.155
129.74.74.20
128.6.192.156
129.130.252.140
82.130.102.160 (on about 30 or 40 different ports)
137.99.11.86
130.253.21.123
147.102.3.117
129.130.252.141

whenever one connects, i get flooded with the ping fail

http://bgp.he.net/ip/206.12.16.155     -->BCnet
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.74.74.20       -->University of Notre Dame
http://bgp.he.net/ip/128.6.192.156     -->Rutgers University
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.130.252.140 -->Kansas State University
http://bgp.he.net/ip/82.130.102.160   -->Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
http://bgp.he.net/ip/137.99.11.86       -->University of Connecticut
http://bgp.he.net/ip/130.253.21.123   -->University of Denver
http://bgp.he.net/ip/147.102.3.117     -->National Technical University of Athens
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.130.252.141 -->Kansas State University
...

All universities. Hmmm. Even the BCnet addres is registered to "Simon Fraser University".
Could these entities be working together to attain high hash rates?

[Raoul Duke]

actually, this is really annoying now, since there are 9 of them

206.12.16.155
129.74.74.20
128.6.192.156
129.130.252.140
82.130.102.160 (on about 30 or 40 different ports)
137.99.11.86
130.253.21.123
147.102.3.117
129.130.252.141

whenever one connects, i get flooded with the ping fail

http://bgp.he.net/ip/206.12.16.155     -->BCnet
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.74.74.20       -->University of Notre Dame
http://bgp.he.net/ip/128.6.192.156     -->Rutgers University
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.130.252.140 -->Kansas State University
http://bgp.he.net/ip/82.130.102.160   -->Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
http://bgp.he.net/ip/137.99.11.86       -->University of Connecticut
http://bgp.he.net/ip/130.253.21.123   -->University of Denver
http://bgp.he.net/ip/147.102.3.117     -->National Technical University of Athens
http://bgp.he.net/ip/129.130.252.141 -->Kansas State University
...

All universities. Hmmm. Even the BCnet addres is registered to "Simon Fraser University".
Could these entities be working together to attain high hash rates?

Open proxies. Open the IP's on your browser and you'll see.

[AmDD]

So they have around 9% network hashing power...

How massive of a supercomputer would they have to use to get 2 TH/s?  And does anyone know if they HAVE a supercomputer at that university?

This was posted in 2009, but states that CSCS is run by the university and they had the "Cray XT5"

http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/090623_top500_nsn/index_EN



The top 500 list of supercomputers currently lists CSCS as #57 with the "Cray XE6".

http://www.top500.org/list/2012/06/100

[niko]

I don't know what I'm talking about, but: could there be a connection between BitThief and a massive mining botnet?

[niko]

Would it help to block connections from this IP to our clients, and if so - how to do it?

[Stephen Gornick]

Instead they're running at about 8-9% of the network, and hoping to get 6 blocks in a row to reverse a transaction (double spending)?

All that to reverse a transaction?  

Wouldn't it be easier for them to just make a purchase with credit card and then report the card as having been stolen?    

[zorgberg]

I don't know what I'm talking about, but: could there be a connection between BitThief and a massive mining botnet?

I don't think so.  From a quick look, Bitthief just seems to be an exploit of the BitTorrent protocol.  It is interesting however that bitthief is present on port 80 of the Zurich IP (along with an unobfuscated version).   The only connection that I see is that bitthief is an exploit in a P2P protocol (BitTorrent) and bitcoin is another example of a P2P protocol.  

[Kaliecious]

University computers, bitcoins, Its gotta be Kevin Mitnick!