Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.
by
justusranvier
on 01/07/2015, 02:38:20 UTC
Here are some attacks which are affected by the number of nodes and/or miners and/or hashrate:

Attacker: Miners
Attack: Double spending. A miner can spend bitcoins on a product or service, then produce a block which invalidates the spend
Probability of success: 100% when the hash rate of the attacker exceeds the hash rate of the rest of the network
Severity: Number of bitcoins controlled by the attacker * number of attacks performed

Attacker: Miners
Attack: Denial of service. A miner can engage in selective censorship of transactions
Probability of success: 100% when the hash rate of the attacker exceeds the hash rate of the rest of the network
Severity: % success rate of censor identifying transactions they wish to block * value of the blocked transactions

Attacker: Nodes
Attack: Double spending. An attacker can defraud a target who is using an SPV wallet by providing them with invalid block headers which allow the attacker to pay the target with a transaction which references non-existant inputs
Probability of success: 0% unless the attacker can prevent the target from communicating with any honest nodes
Severity:  Number of bitcoins controlled by the attacker * number of attacks performed