==== Eligius, please pay my 200+ BTC ====

[wizkid057]

well this escalated quickly *grabs some more popcorn*

but still sad...hardly any scammer is ever brought to real justice...or its very few n far between...the 200btc we got to hold from him is pretty much all we'll get

true, there is no chance of getting the other 400BTC back.

However, I believe that using the 200BTC to place a bounty for whoever comes up with a valid solution, either as new software or a tweak in the current software would be a great idea.

The ~200 BTC belongs to the miners who were underpaid due to the withholding attack.

[S4VV4S]

well this escalated quickly *grabs some more popcorn*

but still sad...hardly any scammer is ever brought to real justice...or its very few n far between...the 200btc we got to hold from him is pretty much all we'll get

true, there is no chance of getting the other 400BTC back.

However, I believe that using the 200BTC to place a bounty for whoever comes up with a valid solution, either as new software or a tweak in the current software would be a great idea.

The ~200 BTC belongs to the miners who were underpaid due to the withholding attack.

I understand that but if they all come to an agreement to do so in order to protect themselves in the future, the mining pools will be safer from these kinds of attacks.

Just a thought.

[wizkid057]

well this escalated quickly *grabs some more popcorn*

but still sad...hardly any scammer is ever brought to real justice...or its very few n far between...the 200btc we got to hold from him is pretty much all we'll get

true, there is no chance of getting the other 400BTC back.

However, I believe that using the 200BTC to place a bounty for whoever comes up with a valid solution, either as new software or a tweak in the current software would be a great idea.

The ~200 BTC belongs to the miners who were underpaid due to the withholding attack.

I understand that but if they all come to an agreement to do so in order to protect themselves in the future, the mining pools will be safer from these kinds of attacks.

Just a thought.

I would consider that virtually impossible.  There are thousands of addresses affected, and Eligius has no contact information for them whatsoever.  Getting the word out to these thousands of miners would be impossible in itself, let alone getting them *all* to agree to forfeit funds... best to just pay them.

[S4VV4S]

well this escalated quickly *grabs some more popcorn*

but still sad...hardly any scammer is ever brought to real justice...or its very few n far between...the 200btc we got to hold from him is pretty much all we'll get

true, there is no chance of getting the other 400BTC back.

However, I believe that using the 200BTC to place a bounty for whoever comes up with a valid solution, either as new software or a tweak in the current software would be a great idea.

The ~200 BTC belongs to the miners who were underpaid due to the withholding attack.

I understand that but if they all come to an agreement to do so in order to protect themselves in the future, the mining pools will be safer from these kinds of attacks.

Just a thought.

I would consider that virtually impossible.  There are thousands of addresses affected, and Eligius has no contact information for them whatsoever.  Getting the word out to these thousands of miners would be impossible in itself, let alone getting them *all* to agree to forfeit funds... best to just pay them.

OK, I understand.

Well, none the less I hope you guys can find a good solution to this

[RealMalatesta]

Btw: Funny how the discussion rolls on, while the guy who opened this thread seems to have disappeared....

[S4VV4S]

Btw: Funny how the discussion rolls on, while the guy who opened this thread seems to have disappeared....

True.
That's because it's a serious matter.

BTW: WK I don't know how your pool software works but can't you have a script like a "watchdog" checking about these things?

E.G. when shares are submitted by a client you could do:

if((sharesSubmitted > xxxxxxx) && (blocksFound < x)){

  // notify pool mods to start monitoring this account

}

Just a thought

[philipma1957]

I am not wrong no solo pool will be hurt  by the attacker.

Um, so you get the worst of both worlds?
Just solo mine for real.

Hey I can solo mine on my own and dedicate a server to run the bit coin -qt  to do it.      this is not about me this is about the major pools refusing to offer this option.     I point this out simply to help>

Two pools admitted they had this happen to them  BTCGuild And Eligius.

Look at this from the viewpoint of lawyers.  They may tell clients not enough to sue for only 200 or only 400 coins.  

 A clear case of neglect on the part of pools to guard against this happening is hard to prove. <<<<  This may have been true from 2009 up until now.

Now every pool not offering protection of some type against a " bad luck attack "  would be liable as being willfully neglectful of preventing that type of

attack.

  One method of defense to offer against a  ' bad luck attack ' is a solo fork on your pool.

So once again I ask all large pool ops to consider this.  

1) Remember the attacks  occurred = FACT

2) The guy that did the attacks by an accident or on purpose can do them again. = FACT

3) So far no large pool has told us what they will do to stop this attack.

4) The attacker can sell his tech to the 400 pound gorilla cex.io

5) solo forks on your pool prevent this attack at least on your solo fork they will stop the attack

6) this is a real threat to BTC   and/or all coins   as large pools can use the tech against small pools

 So I ask again since a solo fork option  stops the attack why do all big pools refuse to offer the fork???

[HypnoticGuy]

Btw: Funny how the discussion rolls on, while the guy who opened this thread seems to have disappeared....

He vanished right around the time everyone realized that not only were we owed the 200+ BTC that were held back, but also the 400+ BTC or more that he was paid for mining when he was not contributing.

[Hektur]

Btw: Funny how the discussion rolls on, while the guy who opened this thread seems to have disappeared....

He vanished right around the time everyone realized that not only were we owed the 200+ BTC that were held back, but also the 400+ BTC or more that he was paid for mining when he was not contributing.

That or his so called "mining partners" told him to shut the hell up before he got them banned from all the major pools.

[NewLiberty]

 So I ask again since a solo fork option  stops the attack why do all big pools refuse to offer the fork???

Even the "big pools" are operated like start-ups.
They do not accommodate litigation risk into the profit/survival model.

Your suggestion is a very good one and ought be a consideration for those pools that want to still be in business in a year or two.
It is easy to implement and shifts the risk to the miner from the pool operator.

Another option for the individual would be to use a service like APICoin.io which will run your bitcoin node in the cloud and solo mine using that.
It is much less expensive than running a high availability server node on your own, and offers many other advantages.

[S4VV4S]

Btw: Funny how the discussion rolls on, while the guy who opened this thread seems to have disappeared....

He vanished right around the time everyone realized that not only were we owed the 200+ BTC that were held back, but also the 400+ BTC or more that he was paid for mining when he was not contributing.

That or his so called "mining partners" told him to shut the hell up before he got them banned from all the major pools.

They cannot be banned.
They can change IP and BTC address.

He probably disappeared because he realized he ain't getting nothing.

[philipma1957]

Btw: Funny how the discussion rolls on, while the guy who opened this thread seems to have disappeared....

He vanished right around the time everyone realized that not only were we owed the 200+ BTC that were held back, but also the 400+ BTC or more that he was paid for mining when he was not contributing.

That or his so called "mining partners" told him to shut the hell up before he got them banned from all the major pools.

His gear represents a true threat to all pool mining.

 So far no one has offered a method to prevent bad luck attacks to their pool...
  A solo fork for a pool works but and a big but  not very attractive to the smaller miners.
Pretty sure the bigger pools see and understand the threat of a bad luck attack.    I can see this to be a real issue from now on.

To any pool op out there   besides a solo fork what other solutions are there for us?


At New liberty   thanks for seeing and mentioning my ideas value.

for me I make money mining and selling and setting small guys up to run a small mining op.  Bad luck attacks would kill off many new people coming into the game.

Most people on this site and other talk about btc going to 2k 3k 4k to the moon.

Growth is the only way to make that happen.  I have said selling a small miner like a R-box on ebay would be very nice to attract newcomers if you point them to a pool with a solo fork.       Cost is low and every block you have a small chance to win.

People do not understand a gambler's mind on this website .... Gamblers want action..   Many play 3 digit numbers legally and illegally   and get paid off at 500 to 1 odds when the real odds are 1000 to one.

Playing an r-box at solo mining is not easy to win  more then  a 600 to 1 chance at current diff to grab 1 block in a month.    but the payoff is very high.

15000 bucks..   many gamblers would buy into that.   I have been pushing at the pool ops to start solo forks for a few weeks...

  So far all I get is a big FORK YOU   pun intended.  I would go into a rant against brilliant computer techs/it guys/code writers which I am not

in that club  , but I won't   as maybe they will see the values of my idea instead of resisting it.

[NewLiberty]

Btw: Funny how the discussion rolls on, while the guy who opened this thread seems to have disappeared....

He vanished right around the time everyone realized that not only were we owed the 200+ BTC that were held back, but also the 400+ BTC or more that he was paid for mining when he was not contributing.

That or his so called "mining partners" told him to shut the hell up before he got them banned from all the major pools.

His gear represents a true threat to all pool mining.

 So far no one has offered a method to prevent bad luck attacks to their pool...
  A solo fork for a pool works but and a big but  not very attractive to the smaller miners.
Pretty sure the bigger pools see and understand the threat of a bad luck attack.    I can see this to be a real issue from now on.

To any pool op out there   besides a solo fork what other solutions are there for us?


At New liberty   thanks for seeing and mentioning my ideas value.

for me I make money mining and selling and setting small guys up to run a small mining op.

I offered this:
When a block is found, send the winning nonce to other large miners and see if one doesn't return it.

[philipma1957]

Btw: Funny how the discussion rolls on, while the guy who opened this thread seems to have disappeared....

He vanished right around the time everyone realized that not only were we owed the 200+ BTC that were held back, but also the 400+ BTC or more that he was paid for mining when he was not contributing.

That or his so called "mining partners" told him to shut the hell up before he got them banned from all the major pools.

His gear represents a true threat to all pool mining.

 So far no one has offered a method to prevent bad luck attacks to their pool...
  A solo fork for a pool works but and a big but  not very attractive to the smaller miners.
Pretty sure the bigger pools see and understand the threat of a bad luck attack.    I can see this to be a real issue from now on.

To any pool op out there   besides a solo fork what other solutions are there for us?


At New liberty   thanks for seeing and mentioning my ideas value.

for me I make money mining and selling and setting small guys up to run a small mining op.

I offered this:
When a block is found, send the winning nonce to other large miners and see if one doesn't return it.

That could work as long as the 'bad luck attacker' is big enough .  His work around would be   100x  2th accounts   and that may slow him down a lot to set up.

use your idea and my idea.  I think quite a few people would divert hash power to a solo fork if given the option.  your idea slows the attacker down since he needs to have enough small accounts to do it.   my idea make the choice on the miner.

 end the risk of a bad luck attack by solo mining our solo fork   or accept the risk and release us of  liability if we fail to stop a bad luck attack.


That is a pretty decent way of dealing with the problem.   One thing for sure doing nothing is really not a good choice by pool ops.  So I hope they do something worth while.

[grnbrg]

I offered this:
When a block is found, send the winning nonce to other large miners and see if one doesn't return it.

* Apparently this can be difficult to do with Stratum.
* If you wait before broadcasting the winning block, another pool may publish first.
* If you publish the block and verify the suspected miner at the same time, the suspected miner may well see the published block and be able to falsely pass your test.


grnbrg.

[RealMalatesta]

Maybe a totally naive question, but... As far as I understand, the guy(s) behind the attack used a "homebrew" version of cgminer. So there are working versions and non-functional versions of cgminer.

Now it would be easy to test some versions and produce a hash of the working ones. It would be easy to produce a hash of the cgminer on the miners and send it out to the pools. If the hash is contained in a list of the hashes of working cgminer-versions, the miner is accepted, otherwise not.

As I said: Just a naive question for discussion...

[philipma1957]

Well I supposed pools could vet miners really carefully like coin base does.

But I don't think miners want to send in id proof of location yada yada yada.

 While the solo fork option stops the attack many miners want the steady .12btc a day that  3x 1th machines bring in on a pool.

 they don't want to go 6-7 months at a time to hit a block.

I am not liking that so far the only thing to stop a bad luck attack is a solo fork option.

I suppose I could get 5 friends with a total of  3th each   we could all solo mine on a fork provided by btcguild or bit minter  or eligus    it should take the 15th about 6 weeks to hit

a block, but with bad luck that 15th could go 18 weeks easy.

This is why if you offer the solo fork as a pool op you take the risk off the pool and put it on the miner.

I am too small of a miner to really worry. 2th  for btc and 25mh for ltc.   if the pools offer a fork I put 10% in the fork and still mine merged with 90%.  And I hope for the best.

This needs to be solved by some clever pool op or mining will suffer a lot.

[taipo]

They cannot be banned.
They can change IP and BTC address.

Yeah IP banning is an uphill battle. The problem is not the IPs, but identifying a unique signature that is this mining rig regardless of its IP addresses and BTC public keys, as an interim method of blocking them across the major pools, while finding a common fix that all pools can employ that doesn't involve forking anything.

[crashoveride54902]

Well I supposed pools could vet miners really carefully like coin base does.

But I don't think miners want to send in id proof of location yada yada yada.

 While the solo fork option stops the attack many miners want the steady .12btc a day that  3x 1th machines bring in on a pool.

 they don't want to go 6-7 months at a time to hit a block.

I am not liking that so far the only thing to stop a bad luck attack is a solo fork option.

I suppose I could get 5 friends with a total of  3th each   we could all solo mine on a fork provided by btcguild or bit minter  or eligus    it should take the 15th about 6 weeks to hit

a block, but with bad luck that 15th could go 18 weeks easy.

This is why if you offer the solo fork as a pool op you take the risk off the pool and put it on the miner.

I am too small of a miner to really worry. 2th  for btc and 25mh for ltc.   if the pools offer a fork I put 10% in the fork and still mine merged with 90%.  And I hope for the best.

This needs to be solved by some clever pool op or mining will suffer a lot.

boy you really want solo fork don't ya? isn't that like solo mining..but on a pool but your still solo mining..which is kinda pointless?

[organofcorti]

How does creating a fork *on purpose* benefit the network?