Who is mutating transactions?

[Tzupy]

I have to ask this question, because nobody asked it yet. Someone (a group?) with technical abilities and some serious hardware
has been scamming MtGox of (many?) coins, resulting in them deciding to stop the BTC withdrawals until they (allegedly?) will fix the problem.
Now that the main target is not available, the scammer(s) may try the same on other major exchanges, like Bitstamp and BTC-E.
Right now I don't know if those exchanges are as vulnerable (or not at all) as MtGox to this exploit, and it would be good if they would clarify this.

Back to the OP, the scammer(s) did something illegal and while MtGox's management / technical staff should take a lot of blame, for not
fixing this without waiting for a general fix from the core developers, it seems no one cares about those who are at the root of the problem.
So I am asking again, who could be at the root of the problem (mutated transactions), please speculate and maybe a suspect will eventually emerge.

[segeln]

I have to ask this question, because nobody asked it yet. Someone (a group?) with technical abilities and some serious hardware
has been scamming MtGox of (many?) coins, resulting in them deciding to stop the BTC withdrawals until they (allegedly?) will fix the problem.
Now that the main target is not available, the scammer(s) may try the same on other major exchanges, like Bitstamp and BTC-E.
Right now I don't know if those exchanges are as vulnerable (or not at all) as MtGox to this exploit, and it would be good if they would clarify this.

Back to the OP, the scammer(s) did something illegal and while MtGox's management / technical staff should take a lot of blame, for not
fixing this without waiting for a general fix from the core developers, it seems no one cares about those who are at the root of the problem.
So I am asking again, who could be at the root of the problem (mutated transactions), please speculate and maybe a suspect will eventually emerge.

it`s inside Gox
the other exchanges are sure since the problem is known for 3 years

[Ekaros]

Gox is almost entirely on fault here.

There are always people who are ready to commit Fraud. It's job of service providers to stop them.

On other hand halting all transfers are rather suspicious as problem is with manual or automatic retransmissions... Which shouldn't be too hard to disable and handle manually...

[knightcoin]

Sniff connections (54.248.236.161, 141.101.121.97 ) then plug 10GigE cable straight to the FPGA HFT Blackbox TCP-off load (no conversion to XAUI) at the same provider rack switch port ? and start "black voodoo" trading ...

[jamesc760]

The only "scammer" who's been "scamming" bitcoins from Mt.Gox is the Mt.Gox insiders, esp Mark K, who's been getting fatter, lazier, and less incompetent every minute.

They only have themselves to blame. Mt.Gox is the FLAW in bitcoin ecosystem.

[Hyena]

Mark K, who's been getting fatter, lazier, and less incompetent every minute.

At least he's getting less incompetent in what he's doing.

[Tzupy]

Guys, you are not helpful... I asked this in the speculation sub-forum and it was moved here.
The newest info is that the problem is not limited to MtGox, but is an attack on the whole network.
Someone is spending time and money sustaining this attack, and probably hopes to get huge returns.
Market confidence may be broken badly if this is let to spread and persist. I'm a bear and want cheaper coins,
but not single digit ones. Now, is it possible to trace the source of this attack?

[cr1776]

Guys, you are not helpful... I asked this in the speculation sub-forum and it was moved here.
The newest info is that the problem is not limited to MtGox, but is an attack on the whole network.
Someone is spending time and money sustaining this attack, and probably hopes to get huge returns.
Market confidence may be broken badly if this is let to spread and persist. I'm a bear and want cheaper coins,
but not single digit ones. Now, is it possible to trace the source of this attack?

There are a number of threads on it in here, they answer all the questions.

[phzi]

Anyone could do this... it wouldn't require huge effort or cost.  Might well be MtGox themselves trying to make their problem seem more serious and global.

[btcash]

A few possibilies:
1. Someone creating FUD to buy cheap coins (probably scammed mtgox first)
2. Banks/NSA try to damage bitcoin (but why would they start with mtgox related txs?)
3. A competitor like Ripple, Nxt or Ethereum
4. Mtgox trying to make it look like a general problem (but I highly doubt that)

Anyone could do this... it wouldn't require huge effort or cost.  Might well be MtGox themselves trying to make their problem seem more serious and global.

Disagree. You need a lot of well connected nodes to be faster than mgox, btc-e, bistamp, coinbase...

[renee25]

just look for all those people trying to exchange gox coins for btc,
they're just laundering their gox "i got coin out of thin air thank to gox faulty processes" for btc
the only way for them to sell btc at a discount is if they know for sure that btc has been stolen from gox.

and how can they know that?
 because they did.

[nmersulypnem]

A few possibilies:
1. Someone creating FUD to buy cheap coins (probably scammed mtgox first)
2. Banks/NSA try to damage bitcoin (but why would they start with mtgox related txs?)
3. A competitor like Ripple, Nxt or Ethereum
4. Mtgox trying to make it look like a general problem (but I highly doubt that)

Anyone could do this... it wouldn't require huge effort or cost.  Might well be MtGox themselves trying to make their problem seem more serious and global.

Disagree. You need a lot of well connected nodes to be faster than mgox, btc-e, bistamp, coinbase...

Nope, you just need a targeted connection and know in advance you're going to broadcast to it.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Anyone could do this... it wouldn't require huge effort or cost.  Might well be MtGox themselves trying to make their problem seem more serious and global.

Disagree. You need a lot of well connected nodes to be faster than mgox, btc-e, bistamp, coinbase...

What makes you think well connected nodes requires some massive expense and cost?

Also for MtGox most of their tx were defective in some way and being dropped by relay nodes.   You could have sent the tx to a miner by bike messenger and it would have "beat" MtGox.

[phzi]

Exactly... anyone can run a well connected node... you also don't have to be first to publish mutated transactions and have sites like blockchain.info register them as double spends.  You have to beat the other broadcast to miners to get it included in a block, but this simple muation spam doesn't require that.

[phzi]

just look for all those people trying to exchange gox coins for btc,
they're just laundering their gox "i got coin out of thin air thank to gox faulty processes" for btc
the only way for them to sell btc at a discount is if they know for sure that btc has been stolen from gox.

and how can they know that?
 because they did.

That is retarded... people are selling BTC locked up at Gox at a discount as a hedge against MtGox being insolvent and running with their BTC. Gox BTC is obviously not as valuable as other BTC right now, because you can't do anything with BTC tied up at gox.

[btcash]

What makes you think well connected nodes requires some massive expense and cost?

Also for MtGox most of their tx were defective in some way and being dropped by relay nodes. You could have sent the tx to a miner by bike messenger and it would have "beat" MtGox.

The sender is at the beginning at least one step (node) ahead of the the attacker. So the attacker needs to be one step (node) closer to a miner. -> Assuming the attacker is not directly connected to the sender.
I was under the impression that MtGox, BTC-E and Bitstamp broadcast their TXs to hundred of nodes. Hence it is quite unlikely that none of these nodes is a miner or directly connected to a miner.
You probably get with a single decent connected node lucky once in a while. But I am not sure if you can easily pull of 16k duplicated TXs (depending on how many were successful).

[DeathAndTaxes]

Not all nodes are created equal.  A node running on a residential ISDN connection isn't going to compare a super nodes with 25,000 connections on low latency, high bandwidth connections.

The "attack node" can also intentionally not relay the originals.   If one wanted to increase the odds they would run multiple attack nodes each with thousands or tens of thousands of connection in an attempt to "cut off" and delay the original transactions from miners.  They don't have to win every race, just enough to cause some "chaos".

Our broadcast node is on a datacenter connection and has a large number of inbound connections.  At least so far, no mutated version of our spends have made it into a block.  The large number of high speed, low latency connections means we likely are probably within 1 or 2 quick hops from most miners making it difficult for the duplicate to win any races.   Someone with a few lower speed connections where half of them are to attack nodes wouldn't have the same "luck".

[Entropy-uc]

Not all nodes are created equal.  A node running on a residential ISDN connection isn't going to compare a super nodes with 25,000 connections on low latency, high bandwidth connections.

The "attack node" can also intentionally not relay the originals.   If one wanted to increase the odds they would run multiple attack nodes each with thousands or tens of thousands of connection in an attempt to "cut off" and delay the original transactions from miners.  They don't have to win every race, just enough to cause some "chaos".

Our broadcast node is on a datacenter connection and has a large number of inbound connections.  At least yet no mutated version of our spends have made it into a block.  The large number of high speed, low latency connections means we likely are within 1 or 2 hops from most miners and that makes it very difficult for the duplicate to have a good chance of getting into the next block.

Hopefully you have updated your node so it won't relay the corrupted Tx's. I don't have keys on hand so I cannot update my hosted node until tomorrow.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=460876.msg5091537#msg5091537

[Syke]

The large number of high speed, low latency connections means we likely are probably within 1 or 2 quick hops from most miners

Isn't it far more important to be connected to the pools? Most miners don't actually receive transactions, but receive blocks from their pools.

[DeathAndTaxes]

The large number of high speed, low latency connections means we likely are probably within 1 or 2 quick hops from most miners

Isn't it far more important to be connected to the pools? Most miners don't actually receive transactions, but receive blocks from their pools.

Sorry by "miner" I mean the entity that is actually constructing the block.  That would be pool operators, solo miners, p2p miners, etc.  If you are not constructing the block you aren't a miner, you are a "hashrate provider" who blindly hashes whatever the pool tells you to.  An independent contractor if you will who sells his hashing power for a contracted rate.