Admittedly this IS exactly what I'm doing. Its in the OP. I"m asking for some brainstorming to take down bitcoin. Thats the point.
1) Construct an attack that greatly reduces the hash rate. I suggested DDoS all the miners simultaneously.
2) Use opportunity to make changes to the block chain (2x spend, whatever)
3)
?
4) Profit
You see, i am talking about a malicious attacker. One who wants to destroy Bitcoin and has a budget.
1) Construct an attack that greatly reduces the hash rate. I suggested DDoS all the miners simultaneously.
2) Use opportunity to make changes to the block chain (2x spend, whatever)
3)
?4) Profit
You see, i am talking about a malicious attacker. One who wants to destroy Bitcoin and has a budget.
Thanks for providing (2). You did not provide that before. The attack you're suggesting doesn't work.
Difficulty adjustments require 2016 blocks and can only change the difficulty by a factor of 4 per cycle of 2016 blocks. Your DOS attack, if effective, would slow down block creation while in effect but it would not substantially change the computational power required to rewrite any of the existing chain.
(It's perhaps also worth pointing out that pools are constantly under DOS attack and many have have been successful DOSed before without much impact, most miners now autoswitch to backup pools... and the rise of p2pool closes that particular issue ::shrugs:: )