[2017-03-24]Bitcoin Unlimited Nodes Recover After Second Bug Exploit

[junlyaa]

Bitcoin Unlimited nodes that went offline following a denial-of-service attack on Tuesday are now functioning normally again, according to online data sources.

The issue, the second of its kind this month, was linked to a bug in the alternative bitcoin software that left an opening for the attack, causing over 100 BU nodes to disconnect from the network.

The erroneous code, related to the software's Xthin block architecture, was promptly fixed, and after the binary patch was released, the number of Bitcoin Unlimited nodes quickly recovered to pre-attack levels.

At press time, there are currently 806 nodes running Bitcoin Unlimited comprising 11.76% of the entire bitcoin network. This figure is up from a low of around 650 during the attack, according to data from Coin.Dance.

Yet, much of the debate on social media has since focused on questions relating to the capabilities of the Bitcoin Unlimited team, which is vying to release software that would effectively replace the standard issued by Bitcoin Core, the network's long-time development group.

On 13th March, a bug that allowed BU nodes to be remotely shut down was exploited, resulting in nearly 70% of nodes hosting the software to temporarily be sent offline.

Further, as part of the latest bug, developers opted to keep the changes private, initially only releasing the code's binary from a private repository. Tempers flared following this revelation, and were further stoked by the fact submitted improvements were not cryptographically signed by those who made them.

Additionally, the 'closed-source' code changes appear to have been leaked via Launchpad.
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-unlimited-releases-bug-patch-as-exploit-brings-down-nodes/

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[ImHash]

Just wondering what the hell did they change from the original source code that now they have to close their source to avoid more stinks to come about? from the looks of it BU says changing the block size is the answer and says nothing else about other issues, the same flaws and issues that made them change several factors and mess around with protocols, what were they and what is the Core suggestions/proposals to fix them?

I understand bitcoin being an open source and all but that is for people to review/inspect and check everything before running the software which was built using the same code absolutely without any change.

You going downloading the code and spend some lousy weekends to tailor it to suit your taste and agendas and have the audacity to come out and suggest everyone should do blindly follow your lead/trust you and execute the software.

You know what BU team and supporters should do? they need to spend time and find bugs/flaws/vulnerabilities in the Core version first to an extent of either Core's failure due to crappy design and coding or people see for themselves that Core it's not a good and reliable software and then you need to provide the best fixes/solutions for each flaw/bug that you've found in order for community to follow you as a friendly party wanting nothing other than the success of entire network as a whole and a cryptocurrency to thrive.

I'm sure if the first version which the founder(Satoshi) released was perfect enough that people started to make a thing out of it and I agree that things might have been changed along the way but so far evidence suggests that any changes Core applied to the code was to truly improve the system and the past 2 years are undeniable proof of superiority of the Core(original) version.

So please go and expand your table on some other cross section because we were here first and begging is our main job

[TraderTimm]

BU is incompetent.

Also, it was down to less than 300 nodes during the failure. The majority came back up after their main Virtual Private Servers were rebooted. If you think that BU's clients are organically spread out over many users - you are mistaken. They're mostly clustered on VPS providers and cloud computing hosts. That's how you manufacture consensus, after all, if you're Roger Ver and Jihan Wu.

Its also telling that the mempool spamming ceased when there were more pressing problems for BU to work on. Oh I know - its a pure coincidence, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

Barely Up is going to fail, its just the manner of its failure and when that haven't been determined yet.

[Kprawn]

BU is incompetent.

Also, it was down to less than 300 nodes during the failure. The majority came back up after their main Virtual Private Servers were rebooted. If you think that BU's clients are organically spread out over many users - you are mistaken. They're mostly clustered on VPS providers and cloud computing hosts. That's how you manufacture consensus, after all, if you're Roger Ver and Jihan Wu.

Its also telling that the mempool spamming ceased when there were more pressing problems for BU to work on. Oh I know - its a pure coincidence, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

Barely Up is going to fail, its just the manner of its failure and when that haven't been determined yet.

They are just going to become stronger and stronger with the $350 000+ Bitcoin fees they are pocketing every day. The miners have no incentive

to do anything... they want bigger block sizes, but till then they can pocket extra high fees because of this problem. Why would you want to

apply a fix that would take away your extra high fees forever? They know the BU "path" is only a temporary fix and can quickly be exploited by

spam attacks.... then they can milk the extra income from high fees again. 

[TraderTimm]

They are just going to become stronger and stronger with the $350 000+ Bitcoin fees they are pocketing every day. The miners have no incentive

to do anything... they want bigger block sizes, but till then they can pocket extra high fees because of this problem. Why would you want to

apply a fix that would take away your extra high fees forever? They know the BU "path" is only a temporary fix and can quickly be exploited by

spam attacks.... then they can milk the extra income from high fees again. 

They are incompetent -- here's an excellent summary you should read, so you are more informed of the "big picture".

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/61bkqe/the_astounding_incompetence_negligence_and/