Exactly 10 years ago Someone did a transfer of 184M BTC

[Beginning-Addendum30]

Exactly 10 Years ago someone found a bug in bitcoin code that allowed him to transfer 184M bitcoins to 3 different address .

    On August 15 2010, it was discovered that block 74638 contained a transaction that created 184,467,440,737.09551616 bitcoins for three different addresses.[1][2][3] Two addresses received 92.2 billion bitcoins each, and whoever solved the block got an extra 0.01 BTC that did not exist prior to the transaction. This was possible because the code used for checking transactions before including them in a block didn't account for the case of outputs so large that they overflowed when summed.[4]

    A new version of the client was published within five hours of the discovery that contained a soft forking change to the consensus rules that rejected output value overflow transactions (as well as any transaction that paid more than 21 million bitcoins in an output for any reason).[5] The block chain was forked. Although many unpatched nodes continued to build on the "bad" block chain, the "good" block chain overtook it at a block height of 74691[6] at which point all nodes accepted the "good" blockchain as the authoritative source of Bitcoin transaction history.

    The bad transaction no longer exists for people using the longest chain. Therefore, the bitcoins created by it do not exist either. While the transaction does not exist anymore, the 0.5 BTC that was consumed by it does. It appears to have come from a faucet and has not been used since.[7]

source : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Value_overflow_incident


How I even know this ?

I know a guy that I've been to school with and he's been with bitcoin since 2010, while I criticized it and ignored it . lately we've been catching up and talk a lot, he said basically someone is probably manipulating the network in different way while we are unaware of.

"The 184M transaction was bold, everyone could have seen it. In the real world if A really good hacker would do the job , he would do it without us noticing, it will be under the surface, it might be too late if ever could someone else even notice"

I wanted to ask the community what do you think of that ?

could there ever be a way that someone else is using the network to benefit his own needs while exploiting some bug in the network we cant even see?

or that's not possible and he is fooling me ?

[Mbitr]

This did happen and was resolved in less than 5 hours ! There are a whole host of core developers who help maintain the bitcoin code

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors

I’m 99.9999% sure there are no more bugs in the code , so no individual can exploit this. As far as who can exploit bitcoin price etc , that is a very different story 

[Yaunfitda]

It was in the beginning though, but the thing is even during that time, the community is very active and caught this supposedly bug and was subsequently fix in no time.

could there ever be a way that someone else is using the network to benefit his own needs while exploiting some bug in the network we cant even see?

or that's not possible and he is fooling me ?

Yes, it's called 51% attack, there was a time wherein one mining pool has the hashing power to do that. You can even read it in the Whitepaper itself, https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf - Section 11 "Calculations.

[NeuroticFish]

could there ever be a way that someone else is using the network to benefit his own needs while exploiting some bug in the network we cant even see?

Yes, it's called 51% attack, there was a time wherein one mining pool has the hashing power to do that. You can even read it in the Whitepaper itself, https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf - Section 11 "Calculations.

I think that you have misunderstood something. A 51% attack would be an exploit of the network weakness (just Bitcoin network is strong now and 51% attack is way too expensive to be done to worth it).
A 51% attack is not an exploit of a bug, what OP was asking.

Now, back to OP question.
Bitcoin code is public. Anyone can read it and compile it (with some skills).
Although Bitcoin devs are very careful, there's always a (small) chance a bug to slip into the code. Of course, we expect this not to happen.

Now the interesting part: In order to have a bug exploited, the nodes have to accept the block with the culprit transaction.
But the network has various nodes with older and newer versions of Bitcoin installed. So I think that if a new bug is found and exploited, blockchain will be forked (between the nodes accepting the exploit and those who will notice it). And this also means that people will find out super quick and fix it.

So unless a bug is there for years, we are safe.

(There's only one problem: I am not a blockchain specialist and I may be wrong with this logic.)

[Little Mouse]

It's always possible to have a bug and someone with decent knowledge will try to utlize that bug but the one above mentioned is unlikely to happen and even if someone attempts to utilize such bug, the decentralized nature of bitcoin will reject that and they may discover themselves on different chain.

[Beginning-Addendum30]

Thank you for all your information
what about mining simulation that able to create fake hash rate without mining rig resulting in miners getting btc without actually deserving it ? would that be possible ?

could there be some kind of loophole when someone doublespend their hashrate?

why does sometimes there are no blocks for 50 minutes or something and then 5 blocks in 5 minutes ?
does that suppose to happen ?

I know its sound like a conspiracy theory , but satoshi nakamoto and bitcoin in itself is one

what if there is another bug no ones knows about and one day again someone will do crazy shit like mine 100,000 bitcoin and will sell it the same minute ? will that make bitcoin lose a lot of credibility for long time ?

This did happen and was resolved in less than 5 hours ! There are a whole host of core developers who help maintain the bitcoin code

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors

I’m 99.9999% sure there are no more bugs in the code , so no individual can exploit this. As far as who can exploit bitcoin price etc , that is a very different story 

There is nothing in life that could be to 100% certainty

after all bitcoin is still a program , a software , there could be bug no one noticing about ..
the transaction was produced but adding too many numbers or how the hack happened ? can someone explain it deeply ?

could there be something so absurd that no one even thinks about and a random kid can exploit it without even knowing what he does ?

[serjent05]

Thank you for all your information
what about mining simulation that able to create fake hash rate without mining rig resulting in miners getting btc without actually deserving it ? would that be possible ?

could there be some kind of loophole when someone doublespend their hashrate?

why does sometimes there are no blocks for 50 minutes or something and then 5 blocks in 5 minutes ?
does that suppose to happen ?

I know its sound like a conspiracy theory , but satoshi nakamoto and bitcoin in itself is one

what if there is another bug no ones knows about and one day again someone will do crazy shit like mine 100,000 bitcoin and will sell it the same minute ? will that make bitcoin lose a lot of credibility for long time ?

I have some ideas to answer your question but I rather hear from the one knowledgeable enough to answer those to verify if my assumption is correct.  As of the bug, I believe there will always be some loop hole since Bitcoin is only a man made program, but it would be difficult to exploit because of the security and nodes that is verifying the transactions. 

This did happen and was resolved in less than 5 hours ! There are a whole host of core developers who help maintain the bitcoin code

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors

I’m 99.9999% sure there are no more bugs in the code , so no individual can exploit this. As far as who can exploit bitcoin price etc , that is a very different story 

There is nothing in life that could be to 100% certainty

after all bitcoin is still a program , a software , there could be bug no one noticing about ..
the transaction was produced but adding too many numbers or how the hack happened ? can someone explain it deeply ?

could there be something so absurd that no one even thinks about and a random kid can exploit it without even knowing what he does ?

That random kid that is not knowledgeable on Bitcoin will never have a capability to exploit it unless that random kid is well equipped with knowledge and tools and of course finance to overcome the Bitcoin security.

[pooya87]

what about mining simulation that able to create fake hash rate without mining rig resulting in miners getting btc without actually deserving it ? would that be possible ?

hashrate is not some imaginary value that can be created out of thin air, it is the amount of work a specialized hardware can perform. imagine when you play a game with your PC using your GPU. if you have an old one and it can't handle the new game that demands a lot of "work" you can't do anything about it. there are optimizations but after that no matter what you do, you won't be able to run that game. you have to buy a new GPU or more than one to get more "power".

hashrate is the same. if your hardware (called ASIC) can only compute X hashes per second, you can't do anything to make it compute 2X hashes per second. that is physically impossible. you have to buy more ASICs to be able to have more hashrate.

[Beginning-Addendum30]

what about mining simulation that able to create fake hash rate without mining rig resulting in miners getting btc without actually deserving it ? would that be possible ?

hashrate is not some imaginary value that can be created out of thin air, it is the amount of work a specialized hardware can perform. imagine when you play a game with your PC using your GPU. if you have an old one and it can't handle the new game that demands a lot of "work" you can't do anything about it. there are optimizations but after that no matter what you do, you won't be able to run that game. you have to buy a new GPU or more than one to get more "power".

hashrate is the same. if your hardware (called ASIC) can only compute X hashes per second, you can't do anything to make it compute 2X hashes per second. that is physically impossible. you have to buy more ASICs to be able to have more hashrate.

What if there is a technology to mine 1000x times faster with just a regular pc and someone has , but he exploit it really patiently not really showing anyone ?

[dansus021]

This did happen and was resolved in less than 5 hours ! There are a whole host of core developers who help maintain the bitcoin code

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors

I’m 99.9999% sure there are no more bugs in the code , so no individual can exploit this. As far as who can exploit bitcoin price etc , that is a very different story 

yeah im agree

so if there any bug right now maybe, a need a couple minute to resolve the bug


Sybil Attack right now i can say impossible for individual, maybe for the corporation with big miner hardware like antminer can do but also there is counter of it

[20kevin20]

I'm quite sure the network is now just way too large for such bugs to pop up again and never be discovered. We have enough companies and individuals analyzing so much data and keeping a constant track over a lot of BTC related information.

What if there is a technology to mine 1000x times faster with just a regular pc and someone has , but he exploit it really patiently not really showing anyone ?

What if there is a technology to generate the entire list of private keys in a reasonable time with a regular PC, but nobody knows about it?

You could think of probably millions of hypothetical scenarios like these, but how realistic are they? If someone gets to make use of 1000x more capacity than a mining farm could do with a simple PC.. it's just unrealistic - and give that guy a damn prize because it'd be insane!

We could go on all day long with hypothetical cases. One realistic potential danger is Quantum computing - AFAIK, Bitcoin still wouldn't be very resistant to it if tomorrow you had quantum computers pop up as customer-end products.

However, if someone found a way to double-spend without RBF and other similar methods (as in spending the same amount twice, basically adding illegitimate BTC to the network) or similar bugs, they'd most likely be almost immediately found and fixed. Welcome to the beauty of open-source and decentralization.

[serjent05]

What if there is a technology to mine 1000x times faster with just a regular pc and someone has , but he exploit it really patiently not really showing anyone ?

I believe this exploit can be easily detected.  If there is some malicious attack on the Bitcoin chain, nodes that verify transactions can easily see it.  Or if ever there are some abnormalities it will be reported.  As of the technology, I believe there is already one, which we called ASIC that is more than 1000x faster with just regular pc, or if you are referring to quantum computers, there had been lots of discussion regarding that which can be seen here:

I don't believe Quantum Computing will ever threaten Bitcoin
Did Satoshi think that quantum computers will exist?
In 10 years from now a quantum computer
Quantum computers
Quantum Computing and Bitcoin
Would Quantum Computer Kill Bitcoin
Will Google's Quantum Computer Destroy Bitcoin?
How Will quantum computing affect BTC security and mining.
.. and so on.

[pooya87]

what about mining simulation that able to create fake hash rate without mining rig resulting in miners getting btc without actually deserving it ? would that be possible ?

hashrate is not some imaginary value that can be created out of thin air, it is the amount of work a specialized hardware can perform. imagine when you play a game with your PC using your GPU. if you have an old one and it can't handle the new game that demands a lot of "work" you can't do anything about it. there are optimizations but after that no matter what you do, you won't be able to run that game. you have to buy a new GPU or more than one to get more "power".

hashrate is the same. if your hardware (called ASIC) can only compute X hashes per second, you can't do anything to make it compute 2X hashes per second. that is physically impossible. you have to buy more ASICs to be able to have more hashrate.

What if there is a technology to mine 1000x times faster with just a regular pc and someone has , but he exploit it really patiently not really showing anyone ?

that would be science fiction-y.
not to mention that the internet would break because if you could find a way to mine bitcoin 1000x faster than the current entire hashrate with just your PC, that would mean SHA256 is obsolete and SHA256 is used in a lot of places on the internet.

[gentlemand]

could there ever be a way that someone else is using the network to benefit his own needs while exploiting some bug in the network we cant even see?

or that's not possible and he is fooling me ?

At that time there were perhaps a few hundred or a few thousand people on the network in its entirety, and maybe fifty or fewer with the knowledge to know what this bug meant. These days there are millions of people using it and likely tens of thousands of competent eyes on it.

An undiscovered and ongoing bug that benefits the one person who found it would be uncovered pretty darned rapidly. If it wasn't due to the bug itself, it would be the benefit flowing to the one who found it. Anything erroneous would be pounced on by everyone else.

[Carlton Banks]

could there ever be a way that someone else is using the network to benefit his own needs while exploiting some bug in the network we cant even see?

yes (well, kinda), and it happened more recently


the Antminer company (who develop and sell mining ASICs for cryptocurrencies) admitted that they had been producing mining machines that were capable of using an exploit to improve the effective hashrate of their products, they had been keeping it secret, but the introduction of a new type of bitcoin transaction called 'segregated witness' somehow forced the fact into public knowledge (something to do with a patent dispute iirc)

Antminer claimed to have created the firmware "just for fun", but some people doubt this, as it provided double-digit % increases in effective hashrate to their miners (but not 1000's of %, which you appear to be scared about)

[BrewMaster]

capable of using an exploit to improve the effective hashrate of their products,

i don't think we can categorize ASIC boost as using an "exploit" since it is not harmful and from the numbers i saw the effectiveness gain wasn't as high as the reports circulating the social media.

[Carlton Banks]

capable of using an exploit to improve the effective hashrate of their products,

i don't think we can categorize ASIC boost as using an "exploit" since it is not harmful and from the numbers i saw the effectiveness gain wasn't as high as the reports circulating the social media.

well, yeah, but it's difficult to categorize it as anything much, I'm just trying to explain it without using any technical detail.

@Brewmaster is, I'm guessing, referring to the fact that ASIC boost is still being used, but in the publicly noticible form, not the secret way that was possible (and which Antminer coughed to putting in their firmware) until segregated witness was activated for Bitcoin (which happened 3 years ago)

ASIC boost is really just a mining hardware optimization that didn't depend on any bug or design vulnerability in Bitcoin, or on the hashing algo Bitcoin mining uses

[hatshepsut93]

Thank you for all your information
what about mining simulation that able to create fake hash rate without mining rig resulting in miners getting btc without actually deserving it ? would that be possible ?

If someone breaks SHA-256 and be able to craft arbitrary hash from arbitrary input, then they could easily mine without PoW. But if someone actually managed to do it, they'd likely not waste it on Bitcoin and instead reap millions on some darknet zeroday market.

why does sometimes there are no blocks for 50 minutes or something and then 5 blocks in 5 minutes ?
does that suppose to happen ?

Yes it's normal, it's called variance, Bitcoin mining is essentially like gambling, miners just guess the correct nonce. Sometimes they win a lot, and sometimes they lose a lot.

[BrewMaster]

Yes it's normal, it's called variance, Bitcoin mining is essentially like gambling, miners just guess the correct nonce. Sometimes they win a lot, and sometimes they lose a lot.

gambling is a good analogy to indicate the chance based nature of the mining but "guess" is not the best word to use here because it entails "randomly selecting something" whereas the reality is that nothing is chosen randomly. instead mining is more like brute forcing where you start from 0 and go up to the max value repeat (after changing something else) until you find the correct result.

[dothebeats]

Had it not been for these people who did the exploit sooner, we might have seen some clever people doing some minute transfers here and there and cash it all out right before anyone can ever notice. Sometimes, those who do bad changes the course of development into something better, like really, really better. If only those dudes who did that insane transfer sneak the transfers up, they would have gotten away with it and got some money out of it before it got patched.