Another Attack Vector on Bitcoin, learn from Liberty Reserve

[virtualmaster]

Everybody is so scared about a 51% attack on the Bitcoin chain, but that would cost a lot of money for the attacker but there is another attack possibility from the authorities without any costs.

Domain seizure.
35 domains seized in connection with Liberty Reserve money laundering.
ABC-EX.NET
ABSOLUTEXCHANGE.EU
ALERTEXCHANGER.COM
CENTREGOLD.CA
DUYDUYCHANGER.COM
E-NAIRA.COM
EBUYGOLD.COM
ECARDONE.COM
EDEALSPOT.COM
ELECTRUMX.COM
ENTELNOVA.COM
EPAYMONSTER.COM
EXHERE.COM
GETEMONEY.COM
GOLDEXPAY.COM
GOLDMEDIATOR.COM
GOLDNAIRAEXCHANGE.COM
INSTANTGOLDNG.COM
INTEXCHANGE.COM
JTGOLD.COM
M-GOLD.COM
MAGNETIC-EXCHANGE.COM
MEWAHGOLD.COM
MI-BILLETERA.COM
MONEYEXCHANGE.VN
NICCIEXCHANGE.COM
NIGERIAGOLDEXCHANGER.COM
SUPERCHANGE.RU
TACOAUTHORIZED.COM
TUKARDUID.COM
UKRNETMONEY.COM
VELAEXCHANGE.COM
WEBMONEY.CO.NZ
WM-CENTER.COM
WMIRK.COM
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/May13/LibertyReservePR.pdf

Some domain seizures:.
http://domainincite.com/3035-cops-seize-1800-domains-in-2010
http://domainincite.com/6877-another-2000-uk-fraud-domains-taken-down

Learn from Liberty Reserve.
.bit domains cannot be seized.

[raze]

Yeah, this would be a problem... If Bitcoin relied on domain names.

[virtualmaster]

The client and the p2p network is not dependent on domains
but all the exchanges, forums, bitcoin casinos are dependent.
What would be if the domains bitcointalk.org, mtgox.com, bitcoin.it, blockchain.info, bitcoin.org and another 20 bitcoin domains would be seized ?

[Stampbit]

The client and the p2p network is not dependent on domains
but all the exchanges, forums, bitcoin casinos are dependent.
What would be if the domains bitcointalk.org, mtgox.com, bitcoin.it, blockchain.info, bitcoin.org and another 20 bitcoin domains would be seized ?

Then they would open up under non-US controlled domains.

[raze]

The client and the p2p network is not dependent on domains
but all the exchanges, forums, bitcoin casinos are dependent.
What would be if the domains bitcointalk.org, mtgox.com, bitcoin.it, blockchain.info, bitcoin.org and another 20 bitcoin domains would be seized ?

Then they would open up under non-US controlled domains.

Yeah. Or people can start using IP's. The internet would find a way.

[Stampbit]

The client and the p2p network is not dependent on domains
but all the exchanges, forums, bitcoin casinos are dependent.
What would be if the domains bitcointalk.org, mtgox.com, bitcoin.it, blockchain.info, bitcoin.org and another 20 bitcoin domains would be seized ?

Then they would open up under non-US controlled domains.

Yeah. Or people can start using IP's. The internet would find a way.

Or we could all start memorizing random 9 digit strings, that could work too.

[Bitware]

The client and the p2p network is not dependent on domains
but all the exchanges, forums, bitcoin casinos are dependent.
What would be if the domains bitcointalk.org, mtgox.com, bitcoin.it, blockchain.info, bitcoin.org and another 20 bitcoin domains would be seized ?

Then they would open up under non-US controlled domains.

Yeah. Or people can start using IP's. The internet would find a way.

Or we could all start memorizing random 9 digit strings, that could work too.

Bookmark or Favorite.

[MysteryMiner]

would be no different than Wikileaks losing domain. And Wikileaks relied upon DNS more than Bitcoin does.

[blacksterchrome]

Bitcoin never depends on the domain name, so the fundamental structure will not go down. It is the marketplace/community that may be seize. But if the community ie bitcointalk is doing nothing illegal, government cannot simply take down the site.

[keystroke]

Bitcoin never depends on the domain name, so the fundamental structure will not go down. It is the marketplace/community that may be seize. But if the community ie bitcointalk is doing nothing illegal, government cannot simply take down the site.

Aren't the Seed DNS nodes important?

[Insu Dra]

Bitcoin never depends on the domain name, so the fundamental structure will not go down. It is the marketplace/community that may be seize. But if the community ie bitcointalk is doing nothing illegal, government cannot simply take down the site.

Aren't the Seed DNS nodes important?

There handy, but can be changed when needed ... (back to the old irc based system or better yet tor nodes or ...)

[Maged]

Bitcoin never depends on the domain name, so the fundamental structure will not go down. It is the marketplace/community that may be seize. But if the community ie bitcointalk is doing nothing illegal, government cannot simply take down the site.

Aren't the Seed DNS nodes important?

Fortunately, some IP addresses are hardcoded in. Not to mention, if your client has ever connected to the network, it will first/also try IP addresses that were last seen by your node.

[Insu Dra]

You know all these  seizures should boost namecoins interest. Its current state is not that interesting from my point of view but there is so much potential of breaking 2 centralized control mechanics there ...

A) Get rid of centralized .com, .org, .xxx, ... registrars.
B) Put a end to centralized rip off called ssl certificate authorities.

It would just take some dedicated developers to say fu, implement a new distributed dns system in to existing clients and servers and get us away from the attempts to implement .bit in existing dns structure. (later is never gone be accepted by infrastructure companies anyway)

[tinus42]

The client and the p2p network is not dependent on domains
but all the exchanges, forums, bitcoin casinos are dependent.
What would be if the domains bitcointalk.org, mtgox.com, bitcoin.it, blockchain.info, bitcoin.org and another 20 bitcoin domains would be seized ?

Then they would open up under non-US controlled domains.

.EU and .CA are non-US domain extentions yet ABSOLUTEXCHANGE.EU and CENTREGOLD.CA were seized.

The DNS system is run by ICANN which is a US organization. They can pull the plug on any domain name, American or otherwise.

We desparately need a decentralized domain name system.

[virtualmaster]

The client and the p2p network is not dependent on domains
but all the exchanges, forums, bitcoin casinos are dependent.
What would be if the domains bitcointalk.org, mtgox.com, bitcoin.it, blockchain.info, bitcoin.org and another 20 bitcoin domains would be seized ?

Then they would open up under non-US controlled domains.

Are the seized domains CENTREGOLD.CA, MONEYEXCHANGE.VN and SUPERCHANGE.RU under US controll ?
If the Russian, Canadian and Vietnamese domains are under US control then may be every domain is so.

[MysteryMiner]

the .ru or .vn domains probably were purchased trough USA based reseller and they most likely taken goatse position upon government request.

USA goons, good luck seizing any .ir domain!

[pointbiz]

This is a very real attack vector.

Namecoin is a great idea but people are NOT (yet) registering useful data in the namecoin blockchain. Last I looked there were 4 relevant sites in there mostly linux vendors. The remaining 50,000 names were spam.

Bitcoin is the foundation protocol, it needs an exterior eco-system to have >$1/BTC value. Domain names via the ICANN scheme are part of that eco-system. It's brilliant that someone setup namecoin but it needs more momentum. Namecoin is merge-mined and has everyone's respect. Yet it's not useful. Maybe we need to register names other than domain names to bootstrap it. Like map our forum names to GPG keys; maybe TOR sites can use it; maybe some type of URL directories; game data; base64 encoded data; maybe if thepiratebay used it...

There needs to be some key/value lookup that Namecoin holds that is not held anywhere else such that people will bother to have an interface to the namecoin blockchain.

[MysteryMiner]

Namecoin is not easy to use. It requires more coding and more services that use them and have large userbase.

I can add additional DNS servers supporting .bit domain to my router config. But 95% of average internet users cannot. The problem is no real and pressing need for that and there are other workable alternatives.

[ArticMine]

The client and the p2p network is not dependent on domains
but all the exchanges, forums, bitcoin casinos are dependent.
What would be if the domains bitcointalk.org, mtgox.com, bitcoin.it, blockchain.info, bitcoin.org and another 20 bitcoin domains would be seized ?

Then they would open up under non-US controlled domains.

Are the seized domains CENTREGOLD.CA, MONEYEXCHANGE.VN and SUPERCHANGE.RU under US controll ?
If the Russian, Canadian and Vietnamese domains are under US control then may be every domain is so.

whois CENTREGOLD.CA
Domain name:           centregold.ca
Domain status:         registered
Creation date:         2007/02/21
Expiry date:           2015/02/21
Updated date:          2013/06/08

Registrar:
    Name:              DomainsAtCost Corp.
    Number:            45

Registrant:
    Name:              Centre Gold Limited

Administrative contact:
    Name:              Slava Dulikoff
    Postal address:    Box 276, 130-8191 Westminster Highway
                       Richmond BC V6X1A7 Canada
    Phone:             +1.6046828059
    Fax:               +1.6046828059
    Email:             7ic-qsxnm66e@namesproprivacy.ca

Technical contact:
    Name:              Slava Dulikoff
    Postal address:    Box 276, 130-8191 Westminster Highway
                       Richmond BC V6X1A7 Canada
    Phone:             +1.6046828059
    Fax:               +1.6046828059
    Email:             7ic-qsxnm66e@namesproprivacy.ca

Name servers:
    dns.domainsatcost.ca 54.236.127.131
    dns2.domainsatcost.ca 38.117.90.157

% WHOIS look-up made at 2013-06-08 19:10:34 (GMT)
%
% Use of CIRA's WHOIS service is governed by the Terms of Use in its Legal
% Notice, available at http://www.cira.ca/legal-notice/?lang=en
%
% (c) 2013 Canadian Internet Registration Authority, (http://www.cira.ca/)

This does not look like a seizure by any US government agency furthermore the US government does not meet the Canadian requirements in order to register a .ca domain. so even if they seize it they would not be able to hold on to it.

[MysteryMiner]

Now I see. They seized servers and replace the front page with their own version of Hello.jpg containing emblems of FBI and Departement of Homeland Security.

But Canada is almost the same as USA. They will cooperate if properly requested by USA.

Bitcoin must implement various independent ways of peer discovery.