Bitcoin is decentralised, so who defends it from hackers?

[Captimiz]

I don't get this, how do you defend something decentralised?

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[ANHEQIAO]

I don't get this, how do you defend something decentralised?

The wallet encryption, physical preservation

[Captimiz]

Yeah, but encryption is there to get broken. What happens if (and when) it does?

[xhomerx10]

Decentralization is a method of defense.  This is why we don't have to worry if China (or any other country) bans Bitcoin but the benefits of decentralization are ever further reaching than simply political attacks.

Can you suggest an attack scenario?

[franky1]

a cpu only makes say 500mhash

an asic makes 1300,000,000mhash

there are over 50,000 asics in just one pool.

thats the equivelent of 130,000,000,000 desktop pc power creating hashes ever ~10 minutes average.

for a hacker to change the direction of bitcoin it needs to not only have atleast a few thousand nodes to counter the rules but then hashpower of more than 130,000,000,000pc's to make blocks that follow the new rules the hacker wants.

if it just had the few thousand nodes. all it would be doing is rejecting blocks it didnt like. meaning it would be just doing nothing more than holding a chain of no blocks locally in the hackers pc's and no one would sync to it because the rejecting real bitcoin rules wont give it any height to affect anyone else


just having hashpower without the nodes.. would too have the legitimate bitcoin nodes reject what a malicious pool was producing.


its a symbiotic relationship. nodes set the rules. pools follow. if either are in dispute rejects occur. neither has ultimate power. its a decentralised consensus mechanism of mutual agreement or mutual destruction.

there is no single point of failure unless we got rid of
the diverse node implementations of atleast 12 'brands' and only had one...
got rid of all the atleast 20 pools and only had one.

and that single node and pool brand was all controlled by one entity.

[DannyHamilton]

I don't get this, how do you defend something decentralised?

The internet is decentralized.  Who defends a website from hackers?

Each user is responsible for their own wallet and for protecting their own wallet from hackers.  If you don't feel capable of that, then there are services that will offer to protect the wallet for you (such as Coinbase.com) in which case you are trusting them to do so.

There are thousands of copies of the blockchain all over the world.  In order to "hack" that, the hacker would have to do one of the following:

• break mathematics
• simultaneously hack EVERY node in the world on all operating systems including copies that are not online
• Find a significant weakness in the SHA256 hashing algorithm without anyone else in the world being aware of the weakness

Of those options, only the third one is ever likely to happen, and it is far more likely that the weakness will be discovered by a researcher before a hacker figures it out.

[mrcash02]

Technology protects us and technology can be decentralized if there are people able to do it. But to make it work well and defend us, it must be improved always, because the hackers are improving their technology and trying to find gaps to attack us and steal money. If Bitcoin technology continues as it's now for much time yet, we will be unsafe and vulnerable for attacks.

[bettercrypto]

Doesn't  the developer are also the people who defend Bitcoin from hackers?  Aside from miners and nodes, developers keep on working to find exploits and patch it before  hacker can exploit it.  Being decentralized is one thing and having a competent skilled Dev is another thing. 

[cpfreeplz]

Yeah, but encryption is there to get broken. What happens if (and when) it does?

Ugh really? We have to go through and explain this again?

Banks use the exact same encryption. If bitcoins are fucked then so is your bank balance. Say goodbye to your paycheque and bitcoins because it all got hacked. Sound unlikely? That's because it is. If there are people with enough computing power to break the encryption (Hint: look up that giant earth picture ... it's not going to happen) then a newer better encryption will come to be. Just like every other time in the past.

[olubams]

Even though I understand little about the technical infrastructure behind bitcoin, but this question has also been a source of concern for me but because of the notion that I have that its OK not to know everything and not to have all the answers, I just wait till when the answer will come and I am happy its flowing gradually in quenching my curiosity about the subject matter...

[QuestionAuthority]

Our wise and dedicated devs discover exploits and skillfully plug the holes. The same way companies do it with closed source. Just because something is open source and decentralized doesn't mean no one is working on it.

[FlightyPouch]

It is safe from the government, they will not ask for bigger taxes if they will not know you are rich using these digital currencies. If bitcoin is decentralized, the government will be peeking at your wallet and demand for a big tax, which is why we are safe from them. We are also safe from hackers that may hack the banks quickly, the bitcoin network is really hard to hack.

a cpu only makes say 500mhash

an asic makes 1300,000,000mhash

there are over 50,000 asics in just one pool.

thats the equivelent of 130,000,000,000 desktop pc power creating hashes ever ~10 minutes average.

for a hacker to change the direction of bitcoin it needs to not only have atleast a few thousand nodes to counter the rules but then hashpower of more than 130,000,000,000pc's to make blocks that follow the new rules the hacker wants.

if it just had the few thousand nodes. all it would be doing is rejecting blocks it didnt like. meaning it would be just doing nothing more than holding a chain of no blocks locally in the hackers pc's and no one would sync to it because the rejecting real bitcoin rules wont give it any height to affect anyone else


just having hashpower without the nodes.. would too have the legitimate bitcoin nodes reject what a malicious pool was producing.


its a symbiotic relationship. nodes set the rules. pools follow. if either are in dispute rejects occur. neither has ultimate power. its a decentralised consensus mechanism of mutual agreement or mutual destruction.

there is no single point of failure unless we got rid of
the diverse node implementations of atleast 12 'brands' and only had one...
got rid of all the atleast 20 pools and only had one.

and that single node and pool brand was all controlled by one entity.

[AjithBtc]

Already it's been developed in a way to have resistance if someone tries hard to hack. The encryption and security features were well maintained and important​ly being decentralized keep it more secure than  being into an single hand authority.

[Rinder]

Bitcoin has a wall called hash, the big farms has a lot hash, and to any hacker be sucessful he will need 51% the hash over the bitcoin mining, soo i really doubt a single person or group can make anything at bitcoin, if they could they would had done already, soo lets say such attack would cost milions and hackers has easy targets to attack then bitcoin.

[Qartada]

Bitcoin as a network is safe.  Individually, it's about giving responsibility to a variety of third parties for simplicity if you want it and also for yourself.  Responsibilities such as upholding a ledger are given to lightweight wallets like Electrum but the responsibility is still on you to keep your computer safe from viruses and keep your private keys safe.  So the responsibility is contained with the private sector and the individual.

[shinratensei_]

I don't get this, how do you defend something decentralised?

The decentralized system means if there are a lot of the core, and it's not just having a single core. It will be automatically put the wall to defend the system itself. A lot of the cores were running it, and it will simultaneously merge into a system. Imagine there are a lot of walls stand up in front of you.

To break the system you must need to do a lot of effort.

Must breaking over 50% of the core(nodes).

[jonald_fyookball]

I don't get this, how do you defend something decentralised?

Satoshi's ghost, of course.

He's totally decentralized. 

[JENREM]

this is such an interesting topic. i too is now stating to wonder how bitcoin is being protected even though we say that the technology are so innovated this time and may bring someone a good security..

[jonald_fyookball]

this is such an interesting topic. i too is now stating to wonder how bitcoin is being protected even though we say that the technology are so innovated this time and may bring someone a good security..

youtube is your friend

[RGBKey]

this is such an interesting topic. i too is now stating to wonder how bitcoin is being protected even though we say that the technology are so innovated this time and may bring someone a good security..

Bitcoin is protected because it follows an incredibly strict codebase in terms of how transactions are accepted, etc. Plus it's all done using modern cryptography, which if that was broken, in addition to everyone's bitcoins being open to the possibility of being stolen, makes a lot of other stuff useless at the same time. Basically, we'd have bigger problems even than losing a whole $20B market cap.