transaction abuse?

bitcool (OP)

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transaction abuse?

February 11, 2011, 01:06:10 AM

Looking at bitcoinmonitor.com, I am led to believe someone has been running a script, generating large number of transactions among a few clients using ~114 bitcoins.

I guess this can be regarded as a primitive form of DoS attack? does this give him any advantage in terms of collecting transactions and generate new blocks?

Whoever mines the block which ends up containing your transaction will get its fee.

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Garrett Burgwardt

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Re: transaction abuse?

February 11, 2011, 01:16:52 AM

Not that I know of. Just wasting bandwidth and time haha.

jgarzik

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Re: transaction abuse?

February 11, 2011, 01:48:02 AM

Quote from: bitcool on February 11, 2011, 01:06:10 AM

I guess this can be regarded as a primitive form of DoS attack? does this give him any advantage in terms of collecting transactions and generate new blocks?

Search the forums for discussion of the MrBurns floods.

Basically, there is a limited amount of free transaction space in each block. Once filled, transaction fees are usually required if you don't want to wait longer. See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees for some details.

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ribuck

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Re: transaction abuse?

February 11, 2011, 11:59:04 AM

Take a look at the transactions. Each one has exactly two outputs, one of which is 0.05 BTC. So isn't this just the Bitcoin Faucet dispensing coins to the crowd of people who have just arrived from Slashdot?

Incidentally, I was watching these transactions yesterday, and noticed something odd. Every time a block was generated, there was a pause in these transactions.

bitcool (OP)

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Re: transaction abuse?

February 11, 2011, 04:46:41 PM

Quote from: ribuck on February 11, 2011, 11:59:04 AM

Looks like it is.

Quote from: davidonpda on February 11, 2011, 03:38:08 PM

Is that someone abusing the bitcoin faucet?
0.05 US dollars is a lot of money in some areas especially if you automate that or just sit there filling out the captchas.
0.05 X 20 every 10 minutes is a buck. $6 an hour is a good wage in some areas...

Today's transactions looks more random than yesterday, maybe because of the volume and the way transactions are displayed on bitcoinmonitor.com .

Gavin Andresen

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Re: transaction abuse?

February 11, 2011, 11:59:51 PM

The Faucet has several abuse prevention features in place. I'm not going to say what they are because then the 'bad guys' would have a road map for what to do to try to get around them.

They're not 100% foolproof, but they're pretty good.

The steady stream of transactions from the Faucet the last few days IS because of the increased interest due to the security now podcast and slashdot mention.

How often do you get the chance to work on a potentially world-changing project?

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