Quote from: 14er on June 22, 2014, 08:17:31 PM

Quote from: philipma1957 on June 22, 2014, 07:16:16 PM

Quote from: 14er on June 22, 2014, 07:01:31 PM

Quote from: DrHaribo on June 22, 2014, 05:58:06 PM

Quote from: 14er on June 22, 2014, 05:08:28 PM

Do you think that "bad hardware / software" exists and that could make the pool vulnerable?

Like I said, all mining pools are vulnerable to block withholding attacks. All pools.

Whether bad software is still out there, I don't know. But as we have seen, it can happen.

Bad hardware is very unlikely. All the ASICs I heard of so far simply look for anything from diff 1 and up. Doing something else would require more logic on the chip.

Okay, I concur all pools are vulnerable to block withholding attacks (currently) .. and established bad software exists, and we can debate hardware concerns pointlessly as a "consumer union" report would have to test different hardware with testcases.

So, given that vulnerabilities exist, do you think it is possible and worth protecting against known vulnerabilities?

Is there a statistical test to say that a miner or group of miners are behaving unusually ... I would think there is.

yes there are tests, but all involve groups of about 100th to 200th of hash.

In bitminter :

group 1 total of 200th
koi ....

Philipma... i agree with you, mostly because I proposed group statistical evaluation and probation.

Do i care if a small miner benefits from bad hardware/software? In theory, yes, but how does one practically identify and enforce?

Well, one idea is go back to grouping the miners together, and paying out proportional to their contribution if it is outside an acceptable statistical mean. You could manage it on a rolling "find" basis. So, for example, if a 200 Th group should find 9 blocks (on average) over a one month period, with a deviation of +/- 1 block, but your group finds 6, that would be statistically abnormal... so the group payout would be less. Likewise, if a 200 Th group finds 12 blocks, you could argue they should get more.

Over time, in the law of averages, it should even out. But if a group is consistently underperforming, then you know you have bad actors (intentionally or not).

It is a completely different way of operating a pool. So, Dr. H needs to buy into this idea and determine whether it is worth his time.

After really looking at a few ideas.

It pushes me in the direction of using gridseed gear and mining alt coins.

Only because diff is small enough to justify solo mining.

I have made a few blocks with gridseed blades and I know the gear and software is working.

Not what I want to do. For now I split up between ltc and btc and use a few pools. lowers risks a bit.

I don't even want to go into the idea that a big seller of gear sells 20ph of duds and keeps 20ph of good gear intentionally.

As I could see it as a way to hurt pools and help yourself at solo mining.

While the bigger sellers may not do this thinking they would be found out.

The fact is right now pools have zero protection against it.

So how about bitmaintech is asked by Chinese government to do this or else?

MIND you all no accusations or conspiracy just a how about it is done?

We all know btc miners are creaming over the idea of the s-3 miner. If the price was .75 btc to .8btc it would sell like mad. I believe this type of attack won't be

done since many wizz kids will look at the gear closely.

But pools need to do something about this threat.

Since it does exist and has been done to 2 pools by the unknown 2ph miner..

I am not saying it was done to bitminter by multipool with his 200th of hash.

He had a case of bad timing to come to a pool with a little more then 15% of the total hash and he had semi bad luck. And since April and May had two cases We were afraid to be a third case here in June. From all the posts I have read.

The odds for April and May were more then 100000 to one while for multi pool the odds were under 20 to one.

Big difference , but still costly if it was intentional.