Bad marks for the issue regarding not sharing the code changes. Regardless of any other pools allowing it.
The issue originates with the violation of the cgminer license.
Bitmain, many people look to you for leadership since you have control over so much of the scene.
Use this as an opportunity of good will.
...SNIP
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on this matter. I strongly agree with you! But how do you know they corrupted and violated the license on CGminer if the miner hasn't been released?
...SNIPI inserted "...SNIP" so my reply did not take up additional space for a short reply and feel I quoted the specific lines which addressed the issue and our comments. Anyone interested who missed the original comments in their entirety may go back one page.
Masha Sha I have zero reasons to doubt Kano's statement regarding this issue. This is his statement in full from page 10 of this thread:
Bitmain have hacked stratum in the S9 miner.
Adding their own special command for antpool ... who knows what they do with that extra command during authentification ...
We don't allow invalid commands during authentication e.g. to stop DDoS attempts sending rubbish to the pool when they connect.
So, yep as of now the S9 wont work on CKPool.
Any pool that allows the miner to send random rubbish during connection will allow it.
To the contrary, I have many reasons to believe Kano's statement. Without going through more than needed please take a moment to consider these points:
1. Kano is the operator of an extremely popular pool here in the US where we enjoy an active, interesting, popular thread discussing the pool and mining activity. Many discussions in this thread are both fact based and speculative which are specific to older generation, current generation, and future / next generation mining equipment. See:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789369.0 Now while I mention US it is popular across the world and there are nodes setup across the world to support miners from all over the world and by mentioning the US in no way do I mean to infer it is not popular everywhere and enjoys a variety of input from a variety of miners who live across many continents.
Kano and CK are the very people who write the CKpool software, CKpool database software, web front ends, and if anyone cared to dig deeper a variety of other software which is obviously developed with the exact same care, meticulous attention, and rewards from use of the aforementioned software many more are familiar with.
Along with the ongoing development and support of these types of packages,
and this is one of the more important aspects of my reply they write and provide the same level of support and attention to detail of CGminer. CGminer is the preferred mining software you will receive on most (if not all) production miners which ship today and to my knowledge are planned to ship in the immediate future. Even miners which do not ship with a built in type of control system with on board software to handle the software interface for the miner will be delivered with instructions to use CGminer in operation of the miner. A few companies have included instructions for use of a secondary package, but in my experience CGminer is always the preferred and most recommend it over anything else.
***To avoid an off-topic debate regarding miner software I am clearly stating there are alternative mining software packages available for some mining equipment, but nothing which compares to the popularity and in most cases mandatory requirement for the use of CGminer. Please do not allow my comments regarding the popularity of CGminer to distract from the topic. I am using these examples to show how popular and the massive installed user base of CGminer. It is the primary choice for most users of BTC mining equipment across the world.*** 2. The Kano.is pool is also a pool where I personally witness a significant amount of testing done in development of Avalon miners. There is a significant amount of hashpower (at various times) where CGminer is used in this testing. In my experience any changes (possible official / unofficial) forks relative to CGminer are documented and follow the license requirements. This does not appear to be a hardship in any way, and to the opposite the work with CGminer not done by CK and Kano during development and support of the Avalon miners are clearly shared with the community in a timely manner. CGminer changes / updates to the Avalon miners work with the mainline versions and you can count on the people responsible for the Avalon Miner to include a much more recent if not the most current version of CGminer which in turn has brought many of us a more secure mining experience not to mention the other advantages which come from including this brilliant and focused programming. In my opinion the security additions and corrections is one of if not the most important reasons for the license requirements to use CGminer in a commercial environment.
2A. I have personally experienced several scenarios where I was forced to update CGminer on a piece of mining equipment in order to close / correct a huge security issue because the manufacturer either did not release firmware including this change or if there was a firmware release it not only did not include a CGminer update there was no documentation regarding what was changed / added with the firmware release. Other times a build of CGminer was included in an update but there was again, zero documentation regarding what changes were made in general, but what changes were made to the version of CGminer used in the update. When you have not only heard from many others who have experienced serious issues with the firmware update, or lack thereof, but personally experienced my miners being hijacked via an exploit which existed in a new miner I purchased where there already existed a correction in the main CGminer release. You must certainly be able to understand where trust becomes an issue and many times these issues arise from a misconfiguration. Not something a simple UI change could correct, but a real issue corrected by a CGminer switch / option set incorrectly in a major release from the factory.
2B. The main CGminer release is not always correcting a security issue, not always correcting a CGminer bug / exploit, but many times correcting an issue caused by a different piece of software being used. In my experience CK and Kano have used their knowledge and worked with manufacturers of both hardware and software to go above and beyond what I have seen from others to provide an overall better and more secure mining experience whenever possible. I have also witnessed changes made by others to CGminer which CK / Kano have appreciably incorporated in the mainline release.
2C. Through no fault of CK / Kano it is not always an easy task for end users to update CGminer in their mining hardware. Not to mention the times where the update cannot be applied in a manner which is retained after a reboot. Many times as end users we have been forced to repeat the procedure after a reboot to simply close a security issue or misconfiguration. I use the term forced because in my opinion the alternative is unthinkable.
Masha Sha I am gaining on a final answer to your question but felt the need to lay out the previous information in support of such. For anyone who missed the original question in summary it is:
"...how do you know they corrupted and violated the license on CGminer if the miner hasn't been released?"
It is through my trust of Kano and my previous experience with Bitmain firmware releases which have left me in a position of zero doubt there exists a situation that Bitmain have "hacked stratum in the S9 miner. Adding their own special command for antpool"
I have zero doubt Kano has confirmed this through his own research and experience. Kano does not make unfounded accusations. Further it is to the detriment of Kano's pool for this to occur. There are MANY people who have posted in the Bitmain S9 announcement thread and / or the Kano CKpool thread who purchased S9 miners and are excited about adding this hashrate to the Kano.Is pool. Kano and CK have worked with Bitmain in the past. I cannot speak to any current arrangements but I do know they have both been involved in previous projects. If there is something in the stratum use of the S9 miner which causes a push for the miner to the Bitmain Antpool mining pool, not to mention changes to CGminer which have not been published who better in this entire industry, who better in this entire community would have the knowledge, contacts, and experience to recognize and confirm such?
To address the portion of your question regarding the miner having not been released: (which to expand on this point for others I will say that your point is they may change something between now and then, right?)
Through more than one generation of miner we have lived through CGminer changes / forks which have included things which some would call shady, but more to the point these items are not published.
I appreciate your question and do heed and appreciate your quote ending your post, but as my final answer I have to simply say it is through my own personal experience with Kano, CK, and Bitmain regarding CGminer which put me in the mindset where I completely believe what Kano stated to be fact, and Bitmain will not change such prior to release. I believe Kano and CK may be put in a position where they could be forced to not allow the S9 miner to mine at their pools. I do not have the details to support the statement by Kano, but I do have the prior experience and common sense to recognize a problem exists.
I most certainly have the respect for Kano and enough information to reach out to Bitmain requesting a reply to the information posted by Kano.
Again, it would be bad if the S9 is somehow pushed to Antpool and obviously Kano has experienced something which causes him concern. We do not need a miner pushing us to a specific pool and we should not be forced to use firmware from someone else (where many people would rightly charge a fee) or SSH into the unit and make changes, etc.
I think the better question is why Bitmain is severely quiet about this and cannot take a brief moment to reassure those of us who have spent hundreds to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars with them.
