IF the NSA wanted to take control over Bitcoin, how would they do it?

[AGD]

Some ideas on how it could work:

- Read through the connection data (phone,email etc) from key figures of the Bitcoin community to gain insider knowledge
- Infiltrate core development and replace Bitcoin key figures with NSA staff
- Discredit respected members of the community
- Kill people, if they don't corporate.


Are core devs discussing this possiblility of a large scale infiltration and how to avoid?

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[bitdumper]

They will need more hash power than the whole world mining today to do a 51% attack, which is probably nit gonna happen. There is no other way to block bitcoins.

[AGD]

They will need more hash power than the whole world mining today to do a 51% attack, which is probably nit gonna happen. There is no other way to block bitcoins.

Your posting reminds me on this:

[BuWICK]

This is easy. They'd instruct their CIA henchmen to kidnap the immediate family members of the chairman of goldman sachs. The release clause: buy up all bitcoins on the open market and send them to us or the little one gets it first.... two weeks later, they dump the price down to zero and spilt the profit between themselves. Like they always do

Light work

[Leonius]

They want to do it but they have to be careful they dont bite the hand that feeds them - the people.  They could end up losing more power than what they thought they would gain, how many control freak nutters want to do their dirty work these days i wonder.

[AGD]

They want to do it but they have to be careful they dont bite the hand that feeds them - the people.  They could end up losing more power than what they thought they would gain, how many control freak nutters want to do their dirty work these days i wonder.

If they see Bitcoin as a competitor to the USD, they would gain control, which seems to be more important than a few hungry bitcoin anarchists.

[n691309]

One of the way to control bitcoin maybe they would hire developers to be included in the core dev team and gradually taking control of most of things about bitcoin.

[Leonius]

They want to do it but they have to be careful they dont bite the hand that feeds them - the people.  They could end up losing more power than what they thought they would gain, how many control freak nutters want to do their dirty work these days i wonder.

If they see Bitcoin as a competitor to the USD, they would gain control, which seems to be more important than a few hungry bitcoin anarchists.

Its probably a few hundred thousand over the world total right? still not that many agree.  

Wont it be like silk road anyway though, if they take down bitcoin and people use bitcoin 2.0.  So its better they work with the system so things like:

- Read through the connection data (phone,email etc) from key figures of the Bitcoin community to gain insider knowledge
- Infiltrate core development and replace Bitcoin key figures with NSA staff

We should watch for that, recent satoshi situation might be something of concern.

[AGD]

They want to do it but they have to be careful they dont bite the hand that feeds them - the people.  They could end up losing more power than what they thought they would gain, how many control freak nutters want to do their dirty work these days i wonder.

If they see Bitcoin as a competitor to the USD, they would gain control, which seems to be more important than a few hungry bitcoin anarchists.

Its probably a few hundred thousand over the world total right? still not that many agree.  

Wont it be like silk road anyway though, if they take down bitcoin and people use bitcoin 2.0.  So its better they work with the system so things like:

- Read through the connection data (phone,email etc) from key figures of the Bitcoin community to gain insider knowledge
- Infiltrate core development and replace Bitcoin key figures with NSA staff

We should watch for that, recent satoshi situation might be something of concern.

This and the blocksize debate. Is this infiltration thingy a topic with the core devs? If so, do they have an idea how to prevent?

[AGD]

Just found a dusty old post of mine:

+1 because thanks to Gavn, we have a scenario, where exacty this reverse exploit could be implemented. Please core devs: Don't let it happen!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2014/02/04/challenge-vulnerable-code.aspx
http://www.underhanded-c.org/_p_26.html

This challenge appeared on an internal alias dedicated to C++. It was issued by Mike Vine, a developer here at Microsoft who agreed to let us share it with the mighty Visual C++ blog readers:

This challenge came from me thinking about a simple bug which could be turned into a security vulnerability, so I thought I’d give it a go and try to code a plausibly deniable piece of code which looks innocent but is actually dangerous. I managed to actually go further than that, and produced something, that whilst unlikely, could possibly have come from non-malicious but sloppy coding.

So your challenge is – if you choose to accept it – analyze the sample code file “main.c” (attached) and try to find the (fairly obvious) security faux pas and ‘accidental’ bug which causes the security faux pas to be exploitable.

The 7th Underhanded C Contest is now open.

The goal of the contest is to write code that is as readable, clear, innocent and straightforward as possible, and yet it must fail to perform at its apparent function. To be more specific, it should do something subtly evil. Every year, we will propose a challenge to coders to solve a simple data processing problem, but with covert malicious behavior. Examples include miscounting votes, shaving money from financial transactions, or leaking information to an eavesdropper. The main goal, however, is to write source code that easily passes visual inspection by other programmers.

[Denker]

It seems to be difficult for them to attack and control Bitcoin from the technical vector.Many nerds are in the crypto space who are also very cautious and paranoid.
The only real serious attack vector I see left is social engineering and infiltration.And I'm sure we already see this happening.Maybe not coming from the NSA but the once in power of the financial industry. Just have a look how many trolls and anti bitcoin shills are flooding in here, coordinated at certain events or times.FUD, divide and conquer and so on. This is no coincidence!
Bitcoin is a becoming a serious threat to so many industries that they will try everything they can do to stop it.
Killing is no option imo.Even if they try to make it look like an accident.This will make the ones who died become martyr.
The reaction to this is would be that coders continue working from underground and more and more supporting them.
An obvious open attack will not work.Therefore they will try it over the sneaky bastardized way (this for instance includes planting crimes on devs, threat, bribe, FUD, divide and conquer).

[lolxxxx]

They will need more hash power than the whole world mining today to do a 51% attack, which is probably nit gonna happen. There is no other way to block bitcoins.

If they block the Chinese, then they only need like 20% of the hash power.

Exactly Chinese owns 51% of total hashing power but it is not so true because some largest pools are located in china and they are public pools which means that anyone can mine bitcoin from anywhere .

BTW , If NSA found that bitcoin is beating USD then they will take control , They will do whatever they found necessary to stop bitcoin (block bitcoin).

And my guess is NSA is already involved there teams in Bitcoins . So they can take over anytime .

[bob123]

If they really feel like they want to take control over Bitcoin they will do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal.

[monsanto]

Some ideas on how it could work:

- Read through the connection data (phone,email etc) from key figures of the Bitcoin community to gain insider knowledge
- Infiltrate core development and replace Bitcoin key figures with NSA staff
- Discredit respected members of the community
- Kill people, if they don't corporate.

I think they would start by buying a bitcointalk member account (at least hero level) and making a post asking for ideas... something like "How could NSA take control over Bitcoin?" 

[PinkLlama]

Some ideas on how it could work:

- Read through the connection data (phone,email etc) from key figures of the Bitcoin community to gain insider knowledge
- Infiltrate core development and replace Bitcoin key figures with NSA staff
- Discredit respected members of the community
- Kill people, if they don't corporate.

I think they would start by buying a bitcointalk member account (at least hero level) and making a post asking for ideas... something like "How could NSA take control over Bitcoin?" 

lmao this

[AGD]

Some ideas on how it could work:

- Read through the connection data (phone,email etc) from key figures of the Bitcoin community to gain insider knowledge
- Infiltrate core development and replace Bitcoin key figures with NSA staff
- Discredit respected members of the community
- Kill people, if they don't corporate.

I think they would start by buying a bitcointalk member account (at least hero level) and making a post asking for ideas... something like "How could NSA take control over Bitcoin?" 

Blast! My evil plan is foiled.

[OmegaStarScream]

Bitcoin reached a point where it can't be stopped anymore so I don't think there is anything to do to kill it or even control it . I mean they can try ... but I don't think they will achieve their goal . (unless the Bitcoin community goes retard and don't care about decentralization and privacy etc... anymore).

[AGD]

Bitcoin reached a point where it can't be stopped anymore so I don't think there is anything to do to kill it or even control it . I mean they can try ... but I don't think they will achieve their goal . (unless the Bitcoin community goes retard and don't care about decentralization and privacy etc... anymore).

I see your point and I also would like to see Bitcoin succeed and still keep being decentralized, but there are some bottlenecks, like the group of core developers and a few respected members of the community, which could be slowly become infiltrated, deceived, discredited and/or replaced. I think Andreas A. made the right move by not going to this meeting in London, esp. when he thinks that "everybody can be fooled by a smart con artist". He should have asked me (AGD: Andreas, tell Craig to sign a message with his key from 2008 or to GTFO)

[NeuroticFish]

Are core devs discussing this possiblility of a large scale infiltration and how to avoid?

Actually the best way to take over Bitcoin, imho, would be to get a few agents become core devs, respected (and influential!) members of the community.
Then they can take whatever decisions they want, from blacklisting you to putting your IP into the transaction or whatever surveillance ideas they could have.

[AGD]

Are core devs discussing this possiblility of a large scale infiltration and how to avoid?

Actually the best way to take over Bitcoin, imho, would be to get a few agents become core devs, respected (and influential!) members of the community.
Then they can take whatever decisions they want, from blacklisting you to putting your IP into the transaction or whatever surveillance ideas they could have.

Many people would even agree to it, when they read, that Al-Baghdadi is using Bitcoins to transfer money to his international fight club and there is a need to change some parts of the code, that is EXCLUSIVELY being used to hunt terrorists. Since I am no terrorist and I have nothing to hide ... go along. I know you are protecting me.