Enjoy?

[DeathAndTaxes]

I've got a feeling this type of spamming will unfortunately become more common. Anyone know if the devs are working on a solution to this? Will it become a big problem or is it just a minor annoyance?

Actually it is a problem.   One place I was trying to make a deposit too is blocked because their software isn't looking past the unconfirmed transactions.   Who knows how many places this is going to cause trouble with.

It is also very concerning that someone might be dusting to find valid wallets.   Maybe they are planning on trying to mine wallets, which should be too hard but who knows for sure?

What is dusting and what do you mean by mine them?

He has no idea. 

Someone sending you money isn't an attack.  It might be annoying but it isn't an attack, otherwise people would attack each other by sending them pennies in the mail.

When you think about it a Bitcoin address is very much like a postal address.  You can't prevent someone from sending you mail, you can't prevent someone from sending you money in the mail, you can't prevent someone from sending bitcoins to an address that is public (and any address you ever received funds from is public).

[Karasugoi]

I've got a feeling this type of spamming will unfortunately become more common. Anyone know if the devs are working on a solution to this? Will it become a big problem or is it just a minor annoyance?

Actually it is a problem.   One place I was trying to make a deposit too is blocked because their software isn't looking past the unconfirmed transactions.   Who knows how many places this is going to cause trouble with.

It is also very concerning that someone might be dusting to find valid wallets.   Maybe they are planning on trying to mine wallets, which should be too hard but who knows for sure?

What is dusting and what do you mean by mine them?

He has no idea. 

Someone sending you money isn't an attack.  It might be annoying but it isn't an attack, otherwise people would attack each other by sending them pennies in the mail.

When you think about it a Bitcoin address is very much like a postal address.  You can't prevent someone from sending you mail, you can't prevent someone from sending you money in the mail, you can't prevent someone from sending bitcoins to an address that is public (and any address you ever received funds from is public).

What if these pennies end up landing in people's paper wallets?
I read that multiple deposits to paper wallets could render them unusable.
I hope I am wrong.

[Mitchell]

What if these pennies end up landing in people's paper wallets?
I read that multiple deposits to paper wallets could render them unusable.
I hope I am wrong.

That is pure bullshit. Why would a paper wallet become unusable because of a dust transaction that will never be confirmed? Makes no sense to me.

[yatsey87]

What if these pennies end up landing in people's paper wallets?
I read that multiple deposits to paper wallets could render them unusable.
I hope I am wrong.

That is pure bullshit. Why would a paper wallet become unusable because of a dust transaction that will never be confirmed? Makes no sense to me.

Some people tend to think you can only use paper wallets once for some reason.

[altsay]

This address too: 1SochiWwFFySPjQoi2biVftXn8NRPCSQC

Should anyone who receives a deposit from one of these addresses be worried?

I saw a post on reddit the other day asking about deposits from enjoy and sochi addresses. Like tiny amounts. Someone replied and said that who ever is doing that is "dusting" the network for adresses. I am not sure what he meant and he didn't reply but i would still be vigilant. Maybe someone on the forum knows what "dusting" is.

It means making the environment (i.e blockchain, in this case) foggy. But it wont affect the blockchain as it might look to a newbie person.

[dyask]

What if these pennies end up landing in people's paper wallets?
I read that multiple deposits to paper wallets could render them unusable.
I hope I am wrong.

That is pure bullshit. Why would a paper wallet become unusable because of a dust transaction that will never be confirmed? Makes no sense to me.

It isn't BS.  It depends on the software being used.   At least two places now are broken because of this unconfirmed transaction.  (Likely many more. We shouldn't assume all software handles this fine.)

1) At scrypt.cc I was trying to make a deposit and it was blocked by this kind of unconfirmed transaction.   Granted they need to fix their end.   They manually funded my account and changed my wallet.   (Real painful, but they were very responsive)
2) There have been reports that the unconfirmed transaction blocks the blockchain.info sweep feature used with paper wallets.

Basically this unwanted satoshi spam isn't harmless.   These can be worked around but a naive user may get blocked.    

[dyask]

I've got a feeling this type of spamming will unfortunately become more common. Anyone know if the devs are working on a solution to this? Will it become a big problem or is it just a minor annoyance?

Actually it is a problem.   One place I was trying to make a deposit too is blocked because their software isn't looking past the unconfirmed transactions.   Who knows how many places this is going to cause trouble with.

It is also very concerning that someone might be dusting to find valid wallets.   Maybe they are planning on trying to mine wallets, which should be too hard but who knows for sure?

What is dusting and what do you mean by mine them?

Dusting is just creating a lot of very small transactions.   It wastes space in the block chain with these dust transactions that still take up room.   I'm not clear on all the applications of it.   There are some theories on how it could be used to help track a wallet back to an IP.   Another use might be to try to build a list of valid address.   In theory one could generate private keys and see if they match any of the list of known wallets.   If you get a hit you have a valid private key.   That approach is unlikely to work, but it doesn't stop someone from trying. 

[DeathAndTaxes]

What if these pennies end up landing in people's paper wallets?
I read that multiple deposits to paper wallets could render them unusable.
I hope I am wrong.

That is pure bullshit. Why would a paper wallet become unusable because of a dust transaction that will never be confirmed? Makes no sense to me.

Some people tend to think you can only use paper wallets once for some reason.

You shouldn't re use a paper wallet after you import it into QT client and SPEND.  This is because the QT client sends the change to a new address.  So if you assume it went back to the original address, and then deleted the QT wallet you will lose coins.

You can receive an unlimited number of transactions TO a paper wallet.  They wouldn't be very useful otherwise.  Someone sending you can extra satoshi will do absolutely no harm to a paper wallet.  Unless some miner is very generous it is very likely the tx will never confirm anyways and will eventually be dropped by the network.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Dusting is just creating a lot of very small transactions.   It wastes space in the block chain with these dust transactions that still take up room.   I'm not clear on all the applications of it.   There are some theories on how it could be used to help track a wallet back to an IP.

Wrong theories aren't worth much.  Transactions aren't sent to a particular address, there is nothing to trace.

Another use might be to try to build a list of valid address.   In theory one could generate private keys and see if they match any of the list of known wallets.   If you get a hit you have a valid private key.   That approach is unlikely to work, but it doesn't stop someone from trying.

Um there is thing called the blockchain which already contains every valid address that has received bitcoins.  For an "attacker" to send you a satoshi they would already by definition need to know your address and know it is valid.   

Bitcoin private keys can't be brute forced.  There isn't enough energy in our solar system.   If they could then someone sending you a satoshi is the least of your worries. 

[DeathAndTaxes]

Why do these transactions even get relayed?
https://blockchain.info/de/tx/5fb080b8ba88696a97c44f6ba9bd26185a884fbdcd7a15c427e889915483e312

Payments (transaction outputs) of 0.543 times the minimum relay fee (0.00005430 BTC) are now considered 'non-standard', because storing them costs the network more than they are worth and spending them will usually cost their owner more in transaction fees than they are worth.

Non-standard transactions are not relayed across the network, are not included in blocks by most miners, and will not show up in your wallet until they are included in a block.

BTW: Is a transaction that doesn't not match the fee requirement also considered as a non standard tx?

EDIT: Seems like the the sender is directly connected to Blockchain.info
https://blockchain.info/de/ip-address/83.223.162.123
But this doesn't not explain why people receive them in their wallets.

There is no hard protocol rule which handles relaying.  A node can choose to relay whatever it wants.  While it is true the reference client won't relay these transactions I see two possibilities:
a) the "attacker" is directly connected to the receivers who see the spam.  The attacker can relay whatever it wants and while the QT client won't relay spam it will retain a local copy once it knows about it.

and/or

b) blockchain.info is relaying non-standard transactions and thus in this case making things worse.  Blockchain.info is connected to a lot of nodes so if it chooses to relay spam a lot of end users will end up seeing it.

It is also possible some other clients may relay tx below the 5430 sat threshold, and users running older versions of the bitcoin client will also continue to relay these types of transactions, but while they may expand the scope alone I doubt they alone have enough "coverage" without a or b above.

The best way to find out would be for someone who received the spam tx to record where they received the tx message from.  Not the sending bitcoin address but which peer sent the the tx message to their node.  Alas sadly I wasn't spammed so I can't help.

[btcash]

Thanks for you replay DeathAndTaxes.

I also thought also about b). If you know that Blockchain.info relays spam, why relay the tx to all nodes yourself.

So the Reference Implementation doesn't not relay non-standard tx but doesn't ignore them either if they belong to your own wallet.

and will not show up in your wallet until they are included in a block.

This is only true if no one relays the tx to you.

I am wondering how many nodes have these txs in their mempool. I really need to set up a node.

[Lauda]

What if these pennies end up landing in people's paper wallets?
I read that multiple deposits to paper wallets could render them unusable.
I hope I am wrong.

That is pure bullshit. Why would a paper wallet become unusable because of a dust transaction that will never be confirmed? Makes no sense to me.

Too many people here talk before acquiring enough knowledge, sadly.
Correct, a paper wallet can not become unusable because of a dust transaction when even if it would get confirmed.

[Mitchell]

What if these pennies end up landing in people's paper wallets?
I read that multiple deposits to paper wallets could render them unusable.
I hope I am wrong.

That is pure bullshit. Why would a paper wallet become unusable because of a dust transaction that will never be confirmed? Makes no sense to me.

Too many people here talk before acquiring enough knowledge, sadly.
Correct, a paper wallet can not become unusable because of a dust transaction when even if it would get confirmed.

I'm glad that I was correct, because I thought that I was going insane and that I should read up on the Bitcoin Network, again.

[Lauda]

I'm glad that I was correct, because I thought that I was going insane and that I should read up on the Bitcoin Network, again.

That would be a pretty stupid fault in the network, using common sense one must realize that this is not the case.
90-95% users here now lack a fair amount of knowledge, I don't even wanna begin imagining how they see the complex stuff..

[Automatic]

This has happened before and it has stopped before. Don't panic.

Are you sure it's nothing malicious or anything to worry about?

It's probably just spam. I don't see how it could be malicious.

It is interfering with normal transactions.   Maybe not everywhere but at least some operations.  

Does your client not order by transactions with most priority unless manually stated otherwise? I don't think 1*10^-8 will have a very large priority. Also, I'm feeling left out, no unknown transactions received, just donations, payments, and, outputs from a few of scripts I have running collecting BTC.

EDIT:- Actually, I just realized I'm only connected to (From my house-hold) two (Self-owned) latest-version bitcoind applications with the 0.00005430 bitcoin minimum, so, many I have, but, they didn't relay them to me. Oh well.

[MakeBelieve]

Is the person doing this manually though? It would take a lot of time to do this for little gain.

[Automatic]

Is the person doing this manually though? It would take a lot of time to do this for little gain.

Obviously we can't tell for sure, but, the answer is 99.999% no, it's automated.

[Lauda]

It is interfering with normal transactions.   Maybe not everywhere but at least some operations.  

No it does not. Please educate yourself before posting nonsense.
These transactions will most likely never be confirmed anyways. They have no impact on the network.

[jongameson]

there's nothing wrong with *any* of this!!  it just means more money for the end user!!

[Mitchell]

I'm glad that I was correct, because I thought that I was going insane and that I should read up on the Bitcoin Network, again.

That would be a pretty stupid fault in the network, using common sense one must realize that this is not the case.
90-95% users here now lack a fair amount of knowledge, I don't even wanna begin imagining how they see the complex stuff..

+1 for you. And well, here is an example on how they treat complex stuff. It's not that complex, but oh well. Someone states that nLockTime is used for Reverse Transactions. I could be wrong about my statement, but I highly doubt it since I used it to create LockMyCoins (which is currently being redone).