MTGox vs mysterious Russia

[error]

Amazon has a Tokyo data center, but as a US company they are vulnerable to attacks by the US government.

[uck]

Have you considered (temporarily) blocking entire countries?

[eck]

Blocking an entire country won't do much... if the attack is larger than your uplink speed, you can block it with iptables or whatever all you want. It won't have any effect. ISPs that specifically offer DDoS protection have specialized (and very expensive) DDoS mitigation appliances that filter out the traffic before it even hits the box.

[SgtSpike]

IPs blocked so far:
http://paste.pocoo.org/show/381851/

Dang!  That's even longer than my Minecraft ban list!

[Mahkul]

IPs blocked so far:
http://paste.pocoo.org/show/381851/

Dang!  That's even longer than my Minecraft ban list!

No wonder we are running out of static IPv4 IPs when so many of them are used for something like this.

[MagicalTux]

installing new server, stuff will be back shortly~

[LZ]

Okay, I hope that we will overcome DDoS!

[cosurgi]

installing new server, stuff will be back shortly~

I have an idea for distributed p2p trading with mtgox as backend. This will require modifying bitcoind server and add extra traffic in our p2p network. I think this can work, please have a look:

- whenever you want to trade you fire up a bitcoind on your PC and connect to localhost,
- bitcoind in p2p traffic is exchanging information about asks/bids (alongside of the block information)
- this information is encrypted with a public mtgox key
- some random/unknown node (impossible to locate), with changing IP is a real mtgox node which has private mtgox key, this is the mtgox node which can perform the transaction and make them really happen
- whenever you place ask/bid it is propagated through the p2p network
- whenever a transaction is made, the mtgox node authorises it with its private key and propagates the transaction to p2p network
- whenever mtgox node gets ddosed it simply changes IP

- for example after starting bitcoind you will just connect to http://localhost:1234 and are presented with basic web interface for trading:
+ you can login with your mtgox credentials (which are beforehand distributed in whole p2p network in encrypted form, confirmed with mtgox private key),
+ you can create a new account on mtgox server and this request as soon as will reach mtgox node will be processed
+ and all other functionality of mtgox.

If done right, with public/private mtgox key pairs it should be impossible to break, and impossible to ddos.

In fact this interface can be used for ALL exchange sites, it's just each of them will be using a different private/public key pairs.

Trading will be as fast as it needs to distribute new transaction in whole p2p network.

how do you think?

[allinvain]

Umm,,how about no. We all know mtgox is da shit and all but I for one do not want mtgox to be given a virtual monopoly or elevated to some holier than holy status. No extra traffic, no modification of bitcoind. What we really need is more exchanges like mtgox!

[cosurgi]

Umm,,how about no. We all know mtgox is da shit and all but I for one do not want mtgox to be given a virtual monopoly or elevated to some holier than holy status. No extra traffic, no modification of bitcoind. What we really need is more exchanges like mtgox!

I think that this interface would serve all exchange sites equally good. Then we will have more exchanges like mtgox, becuase there will be a unified platform and interface for all of them! Whether you want to use one or another is just up to you. Whenever a new site springs up - it distributes its public key in the p2p network and joins the exchange p2p layer/interface.

[cosurgi]

Maybe so. feel free to build a p2p network like that. However, attempts of modification of bitcoin protocol for such petty reasons should really be considered as "community infiltration attack". Build stuff on top on bitcoin, do not try to build it into bitcoin.

I am not going to do this, unfortunately I have other things to do. It's an idea for someone else, like MagicalTux to use it, if people decide to like it. I just think that it's a p2p trading in its purest form. You can't go any more decentralized than this. And decentralization is a key to success.

This all could be considered an "extended" bitcoind server, in a modular way. Only those who want to participate would download and use it.


A bit of more explanations:

So whenever you connect to http://localhost:1234 you are first presented with a list of available exchanges (each of them distributed their public key in the network), then you click one of them and can log in, using the your credentials which are also distributed in p2p.

Then you are presented a basic interface for ask/bid/withdraw. Specific information needed for this interface (bank account numbers and other stuff needed to withdraw/add money to this exchange) is also distributed along with public key. Lets say that it has a reasonable size limit to avoid blocking the p2p network, actually few kilobytes of plain text should really be enough, so it would be comparable to the size of a single block.

And maybe uploading a new public key (opening a new exchange site) is costing BTC, to avoid spammers (you can't spam if you must pay for that). The BTC cost of opening a new exchange site could be distributed on all nodes that participate in p2p network - since they have external IP, they can receive BTC based on their IP.

[MagicalTux]

Current ETA for mtgox back: before 14:00 GMT (in fact, it should be in less than 2 hours, but never know what can happen)

[allinvain]

Current ETA for mtgox back: before 14:00 GMT (in fact, it should be in less than 2 hours, but never know what can happen)

If you've made some DNS changes that may take a while to propagate. But I assume the changes the reason the site is unreachable completely is that there is yet no server listening to requests and not a DNS related problem, no?

[MagicalTux]

Current ETA for mtgox back: before 14:00 GMT (in fact, it should be in less than 2 hours, but never know what can happen)

If you've made some DNS changes that may take a while to propagate. But I assume the changes the reason the site is unreachable completely is that there is yet no server listening to requests and not a DNS related problem, no?

DNS TTL is 600 seconds (10 minutes)

Anyway, mtgox is back.

[pwnyboy]

It's up and responsive for me, I see it behind Blacklotus.

I was just about to privmsg MagicalTux and ask if he had any use for a donated cache (set up similar to Wikipedia's global CDN), but judging by the fact that the new server is at BlackLotus, I'd venture to guess it won't be necessary until attacks start to exceed 3 or 4 Gbits/sec.  Keep up the good work!

[toddbethell]

it's working great, I have already started buying. Thanks.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

I wonder why Btcex admin is not here yet to clear things up ?

[allinvain]

Great work MagicalTux. It looks like volume is picking up again and price has remained relatively stable while the site was offline, so all is well

Cheers!

[cosurgi]

I wonder why Btcex admin is not here yet to clear things up ?

I think it's very clear:

https://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=6864.msg101352#msg101352

[zby]

IPs blocked so far:
http://paste.pocoo.org/show/381851/

As a temporary measure you could also try whitelisting all IPs used by users that logged in once - this would at least make people feel more safe about accessing their money.