Ethereum Classic - 1.1 Million USD Stolen Through 51% attacks

[eternalgloom]

I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.

Ethereum $ETH▲1.15% Classic, one of the most popular forks of the second most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap has suffered a 51-percent attack.

After Chinese blockchain security firm SlowMist raised the alarm, an analyst at CoinNess dug a little deeper. The analyst found that a private mining pool had managed to increase its hash power to 3,263 GH/s, making it – temporarily – the most powerful mining pool at around 11:00am UTC on 6 January.

After this brief spike in power, the mining pool returned to its normal state of around 300 GH/s. However, ten hours later the same thing happened again, and the pool’s hash rate began to climb. At the time CoinNess’ article was published the illicit mining pool’s power equated to around 63-percent of the total network hash rate.

Shortly after these attacks Coinbase paused all Ethereum Classic transactions, it initially detected that around 88,500 ETC ($460,000) had been double-spent. However, the cryptocurrency exchange has since uncovered another 12 attacks that “included double spends, [now] totaling 219,500 ETC ($1.1 million).”

Source: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/08/ehtereum-classic-51-percent-attack/

At least 14 double spends were detected!

[JimmyNg90]

This is a result of weak POW network. The number of participants in network is small enough to be manipulated by hackers. And almost altcoins have to face this problem.

[none of us]

that really is not good news for ethereum classic. i wonder what will happen next to the blockchain after this attack. i could almost imagine that could be the end of ethereum classic. 

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

<snip>

I read the news somewhere then I saw the tweet from Charlie Lee

This is a thought-provoking observation. 🤔

By definition, a decentralized cryptocurrency must be susceptible to 51% attacks whether by hashrate, stake, and/or other permissionlessly-acquirable resources.

If a crypto can't be 51% attacked, it is permissioned and centralized.

This gives me a thought that he has a point but what will give me security that my coins will not get hacked?

[eternalgloom]

This is a result of weak POW network. The number of participants in network is small enough to be manipulated by hackers. And almost altcoins have to face this problem.

Well, most other coins actually have measures in place to protect them against 51% attacks.
Yesterday, I saw a post on /r/cryptocurrency that stated it would only cost two times the attack cost of the ETC attack, to bring down the BCH network.

As much as I dislike BCH, this was factually incorrect, since BCH has a rolling block checkpoint system to prevent this.
https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoin-cash-abcs-rolling-10-block-checkpoints/

Other coins also have measures against 51% attacks, here are some examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/896kjt/about_51_attack/

https://dailyhodl.com/2019/01/08/the-true-cost-of-51-attacks-on-bitcoin-ethereum-xrp-bitcoin-cash-litecoin-and-the-crypto-verse/

[VanDeinsberg12]

This is a result of weak POW network. The number of participants in network is small enough to be manipulated by hackers. And almost altcoins have to face this problem.

Well, most other coins actually have measures in place to protect them against 51% attacks.
Yesterday, I saw a post on /r/cryptocurrency that stated it would only cost two times the attack cost of the ETC attack, to bring down the BCH network.

As much as I dislike BCH, this was factually incorrect, since BCH has a rolling block checkpoint system to prevent this.
https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoin-cash-abcs-rolling-10-block-checkpoints/

Other coins also have measures against 51% attacks, here are some examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/896kjt/about_51_attack/

https://dailyhodl.com/2019/01/08/the-true-cost-of-51-attacks-on-bitcoin-ethereum-xrp-bitcoin-cash-litecoin-and-the-crypto-verse/

That makes me believe if with all of these problems caused by 51% attack and POW needs a lot of correction.
All of these 51% caused by ASIC miners.

Verge has experienced it many times

https://cryptoslate.com/verge-victim-to-yet-another-51-attack-xvg-down-15-in-past-24-hours/ 

[icalical]

This is bad not just for Ethereum Classic but for all of the cryptocurrency out there, that they actually still has one big flaw. The fact that it can overhash the 51% of the Ethereum Classic POW that we all know it is not a small POW network, it means most of other cryptos might be able to be attacked too. And the worse thing is that, this attack happen when crypto are about to recover from bear market, I hope it will not affect much.

[bitmover]

Although there are many measures against a 51% attack, the only way to really protect the network is increasing the hast rate.

However,not all shitcoins in the world can have a high hash rate.

I believe the solution for those small projects is a different algorithm, such as pos

Ethereum classic should be rushing Casper implementation now, stepping ahead of Vitalik's blockchain (which is only delaying Casper for months and years)

[levyashin]

I think this means death for weak pow networks not for ethereum classic only.

After this, i won't touch any weak pow blockchains.

[rricksu]

I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.

Ethereum $ETH▲1.15% Classic, one of the most popular forks of the second most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap has suffered a 51-percent attack.

After Chinese blockchain security firm SlowMist raised the alarm, an analyst at CoinNess dug a little deeper. The analyst found that a private mining pool had managed to increase its hash power to 3,263 GH/s, making it – temporarily – the most powerful mining pool at around 11:00am UTC on 6 January.

After this brief spike in power, the mining pool returned to its normal state of around 300 GH/s. However, ten hours later the same thing happened again, and the pool’s hash rate began to climb. At the time CoinNess’ article was published the illicit mining pool’s power equated to around 63-percent of the total network hash rate.

Shortly after these attacks Coinbase paused all Ethereum Classic transactions, it initially detected that around 88,500 ETC ($460,000) had been double-spent. However, the cryptocurrency exchange has since uncovered another 12 attacks that “included double spends, [now] totaling 219,500 ETC ($1.1 million).”

Source: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/08/ehtereum-classic-51-percent-attack/

At least 14 double spends were detected!

I thought really that cryptocurrency isn't prone to incident like this, hacking and stolen coins. But I guess, the number of miners affects the security of a coin in a sense.

[CryptoAlphaStar]

This is the first time we are seeing a top cryptocurrency being 51% attacked succesfully, I think.
I didn't think it was possible in practice. Not good news.

[rasulibragimavic]

This is very bad for Ethereum classic and for Its network I noticed that the development team is losing ground on the market and even read that they can no longer promote the project but maybe it's rumors. I hope they will cope with difficulties and everything will be fine.

[adam1230]

There are too many coins which has low hashrates and easyly manipulatable.
For now i think they are all focusing on GPU algo coins but  i know that there are much more coins to attack using asics.
POW is not the best solution for crypto.

[entebah]

This is bad not just for Ethereum Classic but for all of the cryptocurrency out there, that they actually still has one big flaw. The fact that it can overhash the 51% of the Ethereum Classic POW that we all know it is not a small POW network, it means most of other cryptos might be able to be attacked too. And the worse thing is that, this attack happen when crypto are about to recover from bear market, I hope it will not affect much.

There are always obstacles that come when the market looks to be going up, but after reading the article about hacking that happened to ETH Classic really this is bad news for the entire Cryptocurrency, because if the ETH Classic can be broken down by hackers, it is possible to re-consume other Crypto victims again in this Crypto world.

[korean1999]

that really is not good news for ethereum classic. i wonder what will happen next to the blockchain after this attack. i could almost imagine that could be the end of ethereum classic. 

Looks like the market is not affected by this incident. Only ETC will face the danger that their project may die or the price of ETC will go down significantly. I believe that many ETC investors will lose trust and will panic sell in the near future

[LeetPoolsOP]

all that has happened to Ethereum classic over the past week is just terrible. I think that this coin will not exist in a few years.

[Lakai01]

Well, thats the problem coming with PoW ... if someone is able to get 51% of the mining power he or she can manipulate the blockchain at his own will. Very easy for lesser known coins, very hard for coins with big support like BTC.

[anjho.ace]

This is the main reason why COINBASE delisted ETHEREUM CLASSIC on their wallet.
This must be fix soon before they will get back it. i hope that everything will be fix and get back to normal as ETC is a good one.

[boolog]

I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.

Wow, this is again a lot of money, which were captured by the attack. Surely this will not be the last chain to be attacked. As soon as the people succeed and it is financially worthwhile, they will certainly continue.

[Pab]

I haven't seen this news yet in Altcoin Discussion, so I thought I'd share the article here.
Hackers have stolen 1.1 million USD on Coinbase by doing double spends, after they'd gotten control of more than 50% of the mining hashrate.

Ethereum $ETH▲1.15% Classic, one of the most popular forks of the second most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap has suffered a 51-percent attack.

After Chinese blockchain security firm SlowMist raised the alarm, an analyst at CoinNess dug a little deeper. The analyst found that a private mining pool had managed to increase its hash power to 3,263 GH/s, making it – temporarily – the most powerful mining pool at around 11:00am UTC on 6 January.

After this brief spike in power, the mining pool returned to its normal state of around 300 GH/s. However, ten hours later the same thing happened again, and the pool’s hash rate began to climb. At the time CoinNess’ article was published the illicit mining pool’s power equated to around 63-percent of the total network hash rate.

Shortly after these attacks Coinbase paused all Ethereum Classic transactions, it initially detected that around 88,500 ETC ($460,000) had been double-spent. However, the cryptocurrency exchange has since uncovered another 12 attacks that “included double spends, [now] totaling 219,500 ETC ($1.1 million).”

Source: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/01/08/ehtereum-classic-51-percent-attack/

At least 14 double spends were detected!

Not only Coinbase but several exchanges
I didn't see that kind of attack from long time
Mostly blockchain is protected from that kind of bad activity
It is only showing that ETC chain is poor need to be upgraded
There was that kind of attacks on Bitcoin but now Bitcoin chain is secure
Whatever to say bitcoin chain is most secure from all blockchains