Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: 3 Bitcoin Doomsday Scenarios I can't find much discussion on...
by
LeMiner
on 14/11/2014, 09:34:53 UTC
Now lets step over to the social engineering part of it all. Ok, so congratulations you've hacked into all of those pools and you can now unleash your evil plans on the blockchain... One problem, you can't STEAL anyone's wallet! WALLETS ARE SECURED BY CRYPTOGRAPHY STRONG ENOUGH THAT IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN THE ENERGY OF THE ENTIRE SUN FOR ITS ENTIRE LIFESPAN TO CRACK. Having 51 or even 99% of the network changes nothing about that.
Again, you're staring yourself blind at the front-door approach. I have now have thousands of the highest value wallets and their keys. And malicious control of the pools. Now I'm emptying all those wallets into a network of new wallets under my control, too complex for anyone without a list of the exact wallets, to decipher.

Which will be near impossible, if at all feasible, without preparing for this exact scenario in advance.

How often do you change wallets? Every hour? Every day? Every month? How many transactions on the blockchain is purely people changing wallets? How many automatic-wallet-changing-apps are in the public domain? What's safer - a static wallet, or a dynamic wallet?

...Which improves your chances of winning the lottery - always playing the same number, or playing a different number every time? ... See what I'm doing here. Inception. And then reversing it. The bad guys don't. You've been incepted to stare yourself blind at how secure a protocol is that you don't understand yourself, nor tried to circumvent yourself.

And then, of course... not to mention that I have remote agents, and plenty of bandwidth, on my own dark net, and on almost every AS on the internet, and a decentralized control system of my own, that only I can control. Using encryption that is decades ahead of what is mainstream or available in the public domain today.

You could prevent transactions of your choosing from gaining any confirmations, thus making them invalid, potentially preventing people from sending Bitcoins between addresses. You could also reverse transactions you send during the time they are in control (allowing double spend transactions), and they could potentially prevent other miners from finding any blocks for a short period of time. That’s really about it

That's about all you need. What's the potential damage value, per minute, per hour, per day?
Hard numbers. What's the best hedge against it? Someone has worked it out. Is it in the public domain? No.
Is it being tracked in real-time, in the public domain?
No.
Should it be?
Would it be better that only a handful of malicious agents track it... or if everyone was keenly aware of the score?

Hey, the score can even make itself back into the protocol, to beef it up even more. The only beefing-up today is against Moore's law and the size of the network. Do you really, truly and honestly believe that that is enough?

---

This is the initial point of my post. Everyone is going on about how bullet-proof the protocol is, yet there are gaping vulnerabilities that nobody is talking about. Okay, perhaps they're not "gaping" yet, and perhaps not unique to Bitcoin, save for the fact that Bitcoin could potentially present their highest-value taget... perhaps the little talk about it is more a symptom of them not being an issue ...yet.

The protocol is pretty great, yes... but even the ancient Greeks had stories about how fallibility... the Indians were ahead by another few thousand years. Icarus. Jatayu.

What kills you? It's what you don't know or don't see coming. Complacency. What is the weakest link in the chain? It's you - and where you save your key. And your limited knowledge of- and ability to control the hardware-, software- and networks you need to utilize it. Which I started mastering before you could speak your mother tongue, which I stole even before you generated it (if you used my wallet software, or OS...) ... and you're still blissfully eating your steak, pretending that me and my world don't exist, simply because you've not come face-to-face with it yet... once you have, you'll be beyond thinking it will go away if you just close your eyes and pretend, you'll be beyond sticking your fingers in your ears... so perhaps all this is, is your assertion that you have not.

And all of this would be blatantly obvious to people monitoring the blockchain. Miners that notice they're mining on a malicious pool would step over to a different pool, or simply to p2pool. Once miners step over you and your evil plans will be left in control of nice pools.... controlling exactly 0% of the networks hashrate.

So... what's the reaction time on that? Microseconds? Hours? Days? Weeks?...
How many of the blockchain downloaders are actually running metrics on it? 5? 10? 100? 1000? How many of them are sharing their metrics with the world?...

How many people use randomized pool lists...? Because what if I even engineered those?...

Don't you want to know more?...

BTW... have you checked the p2pool code yourself? Which client and server versions? Downloaded from where? Who can you trust.... ? MUHAHAHAHA.

I'll mail you a postcard from my island... where the only currency I need is bananas and boobs.


I'll reply a little bit right now and some more later. Not that you've actually even attempted to understand what I wrote but that's ok, you're starting to look more and more like an elaborate troll.

I don't think you've fully realized yet that even with 99% of the entire network under your control you cannot move or empty anyone's wallet. You do not have the private keys of those people. Without the private key you cannot move any funds on the blockchain even if you had 100% of the network. I don't have to change wallet since my private keys are secure, if someone would take control of the network I would just simply be relaxing and wait out the storm since my coins are secured by MY private key that YOU don't have access to. It's not a lottery, you cannot crack my private key. This image will explain it to you...



Then let's move on to who would see your malicious attempts... Well, pretty much anyone that's running a full node on the network. Doublespend attempts are easy to recognize and there are hundreds of people constantly looking at transactions on the blockchain, so yes, it will be obvious, and it is monitored in real time.

The potential damage would only last for a few hours, since miners will step over to p2pool, which is decentralized. And yes, people are constantly looking at the security of that OPEN SOURCE code as well and thousands of hackers have tried to attack it.

You can try to steal my private keys, but sadly for you all of them are offline. If you really are that good at hacking I recommend you start with coinbase, they have some nice hot wallets and just like Bitcoin their system is constantly tested by hackers. Write me back when you're in (although I'm sure we'll read in the news about it) and then post your "loot" on this thread and perhaps someone will believe you. Public keys are open domain so feel free to try and crack a private key from a public key, you can find some public keys here: http://blockchain.info/

I feel like you have a lot of reading to do. If you would like to learn more about cryptography you could read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols-Algorithms-Source/dp/8126513683/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415981394&sr=1-1&keywords=Applied+Cryptography%3A+Protocols%2C+Algorithms%2C+and+Source+Code+in+C