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[Come-from-Beyond]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47417.msg1055265#msg1055265

What would happen if BCX didn't let us know about the attack?

PS: Will this change in the code help us against an announced attack?

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[coblee]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47417.msg1055265#msg1055265

What would happen if BCX didn't let us know about the attack?

PS: Will this change in the code help us against an announced attack?

Nope. If BCX indeed forked the chain hours ago, this checkpoint would cause his fork to not be accepted by the people that have upgraded.

The normal defense for a 51% attack is just having more hashpower than the attacker. I do not think BCX can match the current network hashpower, but to play it safe, I'm adding a checkpoint.

[pieppiep]

What will happen if the 74.3% at http://pool-x.eu/net will not have this upgrade?
Will it infact make the 51% attack easier?

[coblee]

What will happen if the 74.3% at http://pool-x.eu/net will not have this upgrade?
Will it infact make the 51% attack easier?

If some people have upgraded and some have not and BCX releases his fork, we will effectively have a forked network. For those that are on the BCX fork that want to switch to my fork, they can delete their block chain and download and run the new client.

If this happens, I will make a post about what to do.

[crazy_rabbit]

What will happen if the 74.3% at http://pool-x.eu/net will not have this upgrade?
Will it infact make the 51% attack easier?

If some people have upgraded and some have not and BCX releases his fork, we will effectively have a forked network. For those that are on the BCX fork that want to switch to my fork, they can delete their block chain and download and run the new client.

If this happens, I will make a post about what to do.

How interesting though. A forked chain, any chance two chains could co-exist down the road? Could some people just stay on one, and have a separate Lite economy?

[coblee]

What will happen if the 74.3% at http://pool-x.eu/net will not have this upgrade?
Will it infact make the 51% attack easier?

If some people have upgraded and some have not and BCX releases his fork, we will effectively have a forked network. For those that are on the BCX fork that want to switch to my fork, they can delete their block chain and download and run the new client.

If this happens, I will make a post about what to do.

How interesting though. A forked chain, any chance two chains could co-exist down the road? Could some people just stay on one, and have a separate Lite economy?

You can probably stay on a separate chain. Nodes on the other chain will start banning you because you keep sending them invalid transactions. So you will eventually only be talking to nodes on your chain. But if the pools and exchanges are on the other chain, you may not be able to do much with your coins.

[dishwara]

A forked chain by BCX is same like solidcoin chain which cant be seen by original litecoin client.
Their will be original chain & forked chain both running, the new client by coblee will take the original chain & those who running old client will take bcx chain.
After everyone upgrades to new client, bcx chain will become dead, unless some one keeps on running old client.

You can keep on running forked chain forever, but whatever coins it makes or transaction it does wont be accepted by original chain.

I hope i am saying correctly.

[crazy_rabbit]

Then I guess the question is, if the damage that comes from a successful 51% is mitigated, does BitcoinEXpress have any motivation to continue trying to attack? Of course his initial purpose was to prove he had the power, but does this not significantly detract from the point of continuing at all? Besides a hit to his reputation, seems like a waste of time at this point. If you have all that mining power on-hand, you might as well just hope on the chain and at least through the difficulty through the roof and publish your hash rate, so at least you prove you had the power.

[dishwara]

BitcoinEXpress only wants bitcoin to exist.
No other alternative coin to bitcoin.

Same like Microsoft want to be monopoly & kill Linux.
but here bitcoin in not centralized or run by one person.

[EskimoBob]

BitcoinEXpress only wants bitcoin to exist.
No other alternative coin to bitcoin.

Same like Microsoft want to be monopoly & kill Linux.
but here bitcoin in not centralized or run by one person.

+1

If any of you actually know this loser personally, please be a good human being and take him/her to see a specialist. (s)He needs your help now!

[makomk]

That makes sense. If you think BCX will succeed and are immoral, then the way to profit at the exchange's expense is transfer a lot of LTC in to an exchange and sell them for BTC during the fork.

If the attack is successful then the LTC deposit is rolled back and you can sell them again. Assuming there is somebody still willing to buy them.

In any case, lots of buying before the attack then lots of selling while the fork is being created is the pattern I would expect to see. Of course, that is the same pattern as a plain pump-and-dump scheme...

I'm not sure how well that attack would actually work. As soon as the 51% fork hits the network, the existing miners will immediately start trying to reinsert any non-conflicting transactions it rolled back. You'd basically need the co-operation of the 51% attacker in some form or another to make sure that your transactions conflicted and couldn't be re-introduced.

[coblee]

New binaries released:

Windows (zip): https://github.com/downloads/litecoin-project/litecoin/litecoin-0.6.3c-win32.zip
Windows (exe): https://github.com/downloads/litecoin-project/litecoin/litecoin-0.6.3c-win32-setup.exe
Linux (tgz, 32/64-bit): https://github.com/downloads/litecoin-project/litecoin/litecoin-0.6.3c-linux.tar.gz
Mac OS X: https://github.com/downloads/litecoin-project/litecoin/litecoin-0.6.3c-macosx.dmg

[galambo]

That makes sense. If you think BCX will succeed and are immoral, then the way to profit at the exchange's expense is transfer a lot of LTC in to an exchange and sell them for BTC during the fork.

If the attack is successful then the LTC deposit is rolled back and you can sell them again. Assuming there is somebody still willing to buy them.

In any case, lots of buying before the attack then lots of selling while the fork is being created is the pattern I would expect to see. Of course, that is the same pattern as a plain pump-and-dump scheme...

I'm not sure how well that attack would actually work. As soon as the 51% fork hits the network, the existing miners will immediately start trying to reinsert any non-conflicting transactions it rolled back. You'd basically need the co-operation of the 51% attacker in some form or another to make sure that your transactions conflicted and couldn't be re-introduced.

It depends on your perspective.

From an accounting perspective this is very true. All the information still exists in the Blockchain, in the orphaned blocks, to accurately reconstruct the attack. The problem is that account (address) credits will be less than their debits.

This transaction condition is enforced by the Bitcoin Client as "not valid." You must always have tx inputs larger than tx outputs.

However from a pure accounting perspective, the account would show a negative balance. This happens a lot in the real world, and there are established ways to deal with it.

This is why I consider the attack to not be a "rewind" attack because it does not destroy the information, it only suppresses it because of the way the Bitcoin client is written.

[smoothie]

Wow, the price has been going up since BCX made this announcement.  Talk about falling flat on your face.  

That makes sense. If you think BCX will succeed and are immoral, then the way to profit at the exchange's expense is transfer a lot of LTC in to an exchange and sell them for BTC during the fork.

If the attack is successful then the LTC deposit is rolled back and you can sell them again. Assuming there is somebody still willing to buy them.

In any case, lots of buying before the attack then lots of selling while the fork is being created is the pattern I would expect to see. Of course, that is the same pattern as a plain pump-and-dump scheme...

Thank you for weighing in Gavin.

[bitlane]

Is BlowHardEXpress going to ever shit  ? ...... or does someone need to throw it's ass off the pot once and for all ?

700 Amazon EC2s - You go Girl/Guy/Hermy !

[VelvetLeaf]

Wow, the price has been going up since BCX made this announcement.  Talk about falling flat on your face.  

That makes sense. If you think BCX will succeed and are immoral, then the way to profit at the exchange's expense is transfer a lot of LTC in to an exchange and sell them for BTC during the fork.

If the attack is successful then the LTC deposit is rolled back and you can sell them again. Assuming there is somebody still willing to buy them.

In any case, lots of buying before the attack then lots of selling while the fork is being created is the pattern I would expect to see. Of course, that is the same pattern as a plain pump-and-dump scheme...

Thank you for weighing in Gavin.

Can we see more statement like that more ?
Gavin's statement make litecoin drop to 0.005 yesterday.
Price is too fucking high now, I need more cheap coins.

Fake statement is fine too, a staff can come in and confirm that he's been invited to see the Amazon book in progress 

[smoothie]

Wow, the price has been going up since BCX made this announcement.  Talk about falling flat on your face.  

That makes sense. If you think BCX will succeed and are immoral, then the way to profit at the exchange's expense is transfer a lot of LTC in to an exchange and sell them for BTC during the fork.

If the attack is successful then the LTC deposit is rolled back and you can sell them again. Assuming there is somebody still willing to buy them.

In any case, lots of buying before the attack then lots of selling while the fork is being created is the pattern I would expect to see. Of course, that is the same pattern as a plain pump-and-dump scheme...

Thank you for weighing in Gavin.

Can we see more statement like that more ?
Gavin's statement make litecoin drop to 0.005 yesterday.
Price is too fucking high now, I need more cheap coins.

Fake statement is fine too, a staff can come in and confirm that he's been invited to see the Amazon book in progress 

I still think the price is too high now at 0.006btc.

No services...no merchants...pure speculation.

I love the fun of speculation. I just refuse to buy at these prices.

Made my profit for now.

Have at it guys!

[hashman]

BitcoinEXpress only wants bitcoin to exist.
No other alternative coin to bitcoin.

Same like Microsoft want to be monopoly & kill Linux.
but here bitcoin in not centralized or run by one person.

Explain the logic underlying that conclusion.  Is that why there was lots of warning to the forum about the 51% attack?  Is that why all this effort was made which in the end will strengthen litecoin? 

As an enthusiast of block chain currencies I say thank you to BitcoinEXpress.  The more attacks, especially made in such a benevolant manner, the better off we become at resisting attacks and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the network.  Keep up the good work! 

 

[dishwara]

BitcoinEXpress only wants bitcoin to exist.
No other alternative coin to bitcoin.

Same like Microsoft want to be monopoly & kill Linux.
but here bitcoin in not centralized or run by one person.

Explain the logic underlying that conclusion.  Is that why there was lots of warning to the forum about the 51% attack?  Is that why all this effort was made which in the end will strengthen litecoin?  

As an enthusiast of block chain currencies I say thank you to BitcoinEXpress.  The more attacks, especially made in such a benevolant manner, the better off we become at resisting attacks and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the network.  Keep up the good work!  

I think the following posts answers your question.

Isn't it enough to just agree on one node to trust? If you then detect a fork, either stop processing and raise an alarm or go with the trusted node.

The one thing all of this has done so far is really expose the vulnerability of LTC and alt chains to 51% attacks. In it's current form, LTC will never be secure as this will always be a possibility. No security equals no future.

Even Bitcoin itself is vulnerable. I am seeing multiple comments about how LTC needs 51% protection by validating transactions from the authentic chain only. They're being called, drumroll.... "trust nodes. LTC Trustnodes...has a familiar ring.

I have ran into the concept before of a node having the only purpose of authenticating transactions to stop 51% attacks.

Was Coinhunter simply ahead of his time and correct all along?

~BCX~

I have no intention of ever bothering Bitcoin.

wow what a fucking hero "someone in a shoutbox pissed me off, so now I am going out of my way to fuck over peoples good work"

some "community" we have.....

Yeah, funny how his shenanigans don't work on Bitcoin. I wonder why...

I have way too many BTC and have been mining BTC since August of 2010, that's why.

Of course. It's a lot harder than it was when Litecoin first came out. But you just have to DDoS all the pools, which we know you are capable of. Then while people are down, you throw a few hundred EC2 instances and a few hundred GPUs at it to fork a chain.

The best defense we have is to solo mine or use p2pool. That way a DDoS won't take all the miners down and it would require more resources to try to outpace the main network.

@Bitlane

You know I can and I will.

@Coblee

I love how everyone else is more of an expert than you on LTC and just don't have the faith.

The timing of the attack will be as follows.

It will take me a couple of days to coordinate the herders, test DDoS defense and build that many EC2's.
Looking for this Friday or early Saturday.The attack will last for several days and after a couple of resets, I intend to drive the difficulty to all time highs, then simply quit. NMC hell all over again.

No coin that has been 51% attacked has ever recovered it confidence level.

~BCX~

You can search & find more.

[hashman]

BitcoinEXpress only wants bitcoin to exist.
No other alternative coin to bitcoin.

Same like Microsoft want to be monopoly & kill Linux.
but here bitcoin in not centralized or run by one person.

Explain the logic underlying that conclusion.  Is that why there was lots of warning to the forum about the 51% attack?  Is that why all this effort was made which in the end will strengthen litecoin?  

As an enthusiast of block chain currencies I say thank you to BitcoinEXpress.  The more attacks, especially made in such a benevolant manner, the better off we become at resisting attacks and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the network.  Keep up the good work!  

I think the following posts answers your question.

Isn't it enough to just agree on one node to trust? If you then detect a fork, either stop processing and raise an alarm or go with the trusted node.

The one thing all of this has done so far is really expose the vulnerability of LTC and alt chains to 51% attacks. In it's current form, LTC will never be secure as this will always be a possibility. No security equals no future.

Even Bitcoin itself is vulnerable. I am seeing multiple comments about how LTC needs 51% protection by validating transactions from the authentic chain only. They're being called, drumroll.... "trust nodes. LTC Trustnodes...has a familiar ring.

I have ran into the concept before of a node having the only purpose of authenticating transactions to stop 51% attacks.

Was Coinhunter simply ahead of his time and correct all along?

~BCX~

I have no intention of ever bothering Bitcoin.

wow what a fucking hero "someone in a shoutbox pissed me off, so now I am going out of my way to fuck over peoples good work"

some "community" we have.....

Yeah, funny how his shenanigans don't work on Bitcoin. I wonder why...

I have way too many BTC and have been mining BTC since August of 2010, that's why.

Of course. It's a lot harder than it was when Litecoin first came out. But you just have to DDoS all the pools, which we know you are capable of. Then while people are down, you throw a few hundred EC2 instances and a few hundred GPUs at it to fork a chain.

The best defense we have is to solo mine or use p2pool. That way a DDoS won't take all the miners down and it would require more resources to try to outpace the main network.

@Bitlane

You know I can and I will.

@Coblee

I love how everyone else is more of an expert than you on LTC and just don't have the faith.

The timing of the attack will be as follows.

It will take me a couple of days to coordinate the herders, test DDoS defense and build that many EC2's.
Looking for this Friday or early Saturday.The attack will last for several days and after a couple of resets, I intend to drive the difficulty to all time highs, then simply quit. NMC hell all over again.

No coin that has been 51% attacked has ever recovered it confidence level.

~BCX~

You can search & find more.

Well, pointing out vulnerabilities makes a system stronger, right? 

I'd much rather any critical vulnerabilities emerged sooner rather than later.  The only way to really gain confidence in the system is to have people attack it, thus demonstrating resilience.  This is also an important role for alt coins to play in my opinion,  after all scaling up the attack by whatever factor and you have the same thing on the BTC network.     

So far the output of this drama:

1) some more work by dev to create a new version
2) a lot of people talking about dangers of 51% attacks and pool DDOS attacks and alerting miners to options
3) slightly higher prices for ltc

Here's another question for you:  when somebody with 1000 times the resources does this to bitcoin and doesn't pre-announce intentions, what is going to happen?