Quote from: infofront on September 27, 2014, 05:54:15 AM

Quote from: BitcoinEXpress on September 27, 2014, 05:49:37 AM

Quote from: vuduchyld on September 27, 2014, 05:42:53 AM

According to whom? I think they might feel like they've uncovered some potential issues. You demanded forced evolution.

I don't recall reading anything indicating that the dev team was ready to start licking each others' popsicles and throwing a victory party. Certainly, that attitude exists, but, shit, trolling is everywhere. Hard to demand forced evolution of the user/speculator base.

Try this.

~BCX~

Quote from: NewLiberty on September 25, 2014, 03:54:32 AM

Its over. TW attacks will never again work against XMR.

If you read the last commit on github, you'll know the whole answer.
ANN here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg8961211#msg8961211

XMR Dev team rose to the challenge of forced evolution in the time available.
They have crafted a polymorphic bitmonerod+client that adds checkpoints at will and with no dev team intervention needed. Its a decentralized self-maintainable solution that scales as needed. Even if you DDoS github, checkpoints can still be deployed.

Thanks are due to BCX for initiating the game. I hope it was rewarding, even though he was outplayed, this time.

If there are also some other anon-busters, but that don't rely on defanged TW, they're probably rested and ready for a rematch by now.

NewLiberty isn't part of the dev team.

True, I am definitely not a part of Monero Development team. I'm nowhere good enough to be useful to them. I'm just another innocent bystander enjoying the puzzles presented by BCX, and the merits of the Cryptonote technology as implemented in Monero.

So no comment at all from BCX on the merits of this evolutionary development? Nothing at all good to say? Not even an attaboy to those hardworking innovative developers who came up with something new to resolve an element of the TW attack vector universe within the 3 day challange?
I'll give it to them. This innovation does resolve the classical TW attacks and defang them even when combined with DDoS. It does this by decentralizing checkpointing.

If BCX or one of the MUCH larger concentrations of computing power are looking to execute a new type of TW attack... Say for example and attack designed to exceed the anomaly discards by relying on luckily matching one of a growing set of high difficulty hashes being databased with pre-computed sequential subsequent blocks... Then such an attack is 1) orders of magnitude more difficult, and 2) it requires a fortunate hash collision, and 3) it can take even a massive hashing effort a very long time to build such a block dataset to garner enough matches to hit an effect within the 720 block window of XMR and 20% anomaly discard.

If something of that nature is contemplated, then such an attack would not be defeated by this innovation. This innovation defeats only long chain TW attacks, which are the sort that are defeated by checkpoints. That sort of new attack would be only defeated by actual mining, incrementally increasing over time. This mining increase would ultimately obsolete the block dataset type of TW attack. Its how Bitcoin did it.

The example blocks indicated in the previous posts do not present evidence of such an attack capability, at best they could show a test, but likely not even that. So no. Not spooked. Not by that anyway.
===

BCX appears to have decided that more forced evolution is needed? BCX is maybe awaiting acknowledgement, and a request to BCX for help, from the devs.

I'd ask myself, but 1) I'm definitely not on the dev team and 2) I've really nothing additional to offer. Nothing except what I'd offer to Satoshi, that I would be helpful to his project when a time came that I could be helpful, and 3) It looks like they are in fact looking for your help here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789978.msg8992099#msg8992099

ArtForz postulated novel vulnerabilities in block chain technologies years ago which were tested and executed by BCX and called Time Warp. It works by saving up pregenerated blocks and releasing them later. The main idea being that you can compress a lot of proof of work into a shorter period. These Time Warp vulnerabilities present some dangers to all block chains in their infancy, including Bitcoin, typically by manipulating difficulty algorithms, and also by winning block rewards. Bitcoin survived that period, we hope. Every coin however, will have to struggle through this infancy period as hash rate rises. All can be strangled in their cribs, even if they may grow up to be an improvement on the state of the art as we know it.

Bitcoin was not made for automating very high privacy transactions. The current development direction is increasingly inconsistent with this. That is then left to other new coins to experiment with. And so, the fundamental innovations of Cryptonote, primarily the ring signatures, while possible to emulate in a rudimentary way with Bitcoin, is not something that is likely to ever become incorporated into Bitcoin. Monero is the largest of these, if it falls, it clearly shows that all the others are much easier prey. So, BCX may keep working on the game of sneaking into the nurseries and strangling babies while drinking Russian vodka, and others will keep on the game of looking for ways to be helpful for developing these technologies and saving the babies. I'd like to see Monero grow up, so I'll keep doing what I can to protect the crib, and bring it the occasional bottle when I can.