[TRC] [DISCLOSURE] Terracoin Difficulty Collapse Exploit

[Syke]

Yes, he does have some mining power, but he's leveraging the time-travel exploit to multiply his hashing power by 10x or more.

[phrozenspite]

It doesn't help the coin any that the difficulty jumping basically broke pooled mining and coinotron isn't doing it as far as higher constant hashrates go

[celkaris]

Yes, he does have some mining power, but he's leveraging the time-travel exploit to multiply his hashing power by 10x or more.

actually no : enable the in-place logging of averaged data and you'll see the block with future ntime/timestamp has no real effect, the problem is that he can mine consecutive blocks, finally leading to the averaging taking those into account...

[Syke]

Last block was at 18:31:35 at difficulty 27431. At 18:51:35 difficulty drops to 2743. He has been mining that block and the ones after it for the last 15 minutes. When 18:51 comes he'll drop a chain of blocks already pre-generated at the lower difficulty. Watch for it.

[celkaris]

It doesn't help the coin any that the difficulty jumping basically broke pooled mining and coinotron isn't doing it as far as higher constant hashrates go

BTE currently experiences a similar problem : some big mining resources were pointed to their chain, long enough to make diff skyrocket, then the miner simple left.. someone really wants a few coins to disappear

[Syke]

And there they are. Blocks 103018 at 18:52 through 103036 at 19:11. Actual clock is only 18:57. He's generating blocks ahead of time, and into the future.

[celkaris]

And there they are. Blocks 103018 at 18:52 through 103036 at 19:11. Actual clock is only 18:57. He's generating blocks ahead of time, and into the future.

this is supported by the protocol, but indeed, the averaging function should proceed those in another way i guess.
I reported the first block with a future ntime to devs, asking how would this affect the diff (magically he first used +15 mins, that's how i saw hit while looking at how frequent blocks were mined).

The real problem here i guess, is that that guy is able to mine multiple blocks one after the other, obviously this finally alters the averaged data and triggers the diff increase.

[wmikrut]

Looks like (according to P2Pool) -- the blocks seem to all be coming from:
216.69.248.251,9323

[Nolo]

Looks like (according to P2Pool) -- the blocks seem to all be coming from:
216.69.248.251,9323

Sorry wmikrut.  I was wrong in the other thread. 

[celkaris]

Looks like (according to P2Pool) -- the blocks seem to all be coming from:
216.69.248.251,9323

if blocks were generated with p2pool we would see two distinct things:

- p2pool author pubkey / transaction in outputs

- multiple outputs, to addresses belonging to share owners

i doubt he uses p2pool (how would he alter remote existing p2pool installations by the way)

[wmikrut]

Looks like (according to P2Pool) -- the blocks seem to all be coming from:
216.69.248.251,9323

Sorry wmikrut.  I was wrong in the other thread. 

No need to apologize!
I appreciate the response.

[celkaris]

what's kinda funny, is that those attacks could come from a pool where miners willing to help point theirs rigs

[wmikrut]

Looks like (according to P2Pool) -- the blocks seem to all be coming from:
216.69.248.251,9323

if blocks were generated with p2pool we would see two distinct things:

- p2pool author pubkey / transaction in outputs

- multiple outputs, to addresses belonging to share owners

i doubt he uses p2pool (how would he alter remote existing p2pool installations by the way)

Sorry -- I didn't mean to imply they are using P2Pool.
I meant when I use explorer in P2Pool on these blocks -- they all appear to be coming from the same address.

[Milan77]

I am mining for few hours no blocks found, with 20Ghash t should be.. at least some... dunno if something is wrong or just bad luck.

[wmikrut]

I really don't know at this point... I see the guy churning out blocks so fast -- it seems impossible to keep up.
The difficulty drops to 565... then in seconds shoots back up to 32,000+

In the mean time -- he's turning out blocks in the difficulty range of < 35 at the rate of 1 every couple minutes.
TBH... I am surprised the exchanges haven't suspended TRC trading yet.

[fcmatt]

so at this point in time trc is terribly broken and i would never mine it because someone is ripping me off?
that about sums it up?

[seleme]

Dev said on Github that he won't play cat and mouse game with the guy who's exploiting terracoin and if people don't mine the attacker will win.

[wmikrut]

So how much hash power are we talking here?
I will gladly put my 7Gh into solo mining if that will help... but what's the bigger picture needed to stop this guy?

[fcmatt]

Dev said on Github that he won't play cat and mouse game with the guy who's exploiting terracoin and if people don't mine the attacker will win.

i guess this is how an alt coin dies then.
seems like there is two too many right now anyway.

it takes 30 of me to equal one avalon. if the guy has 3. we are talking 100 of me just to out do him by a tiny bit.
i doubt that is going to happen.

[CoinHoarder]

Dev said on Github that he won't play cat and mouse game with the guy who's exploiting terracoin and if people don't mine the attacker will win.

That's reassuring...