📅 Original date posted:2012-06-03
📝 Original message:On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 8:52 PM, Luke-Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
> Analysis, comments, constructive criticism, etc welcome for the following:
>
> ==Background==
> At present, an attacker can harm a pool by intentionally NOT submitting
> shares
> that are also valid blocks. All pools are vulnerable to this attack,
> whether
> centralized or decentralized and regardless of reward system used. The
> attack's effectiveness is proportional to ratio of the attacker's hashrate
> to
> the rest of the pool.
>
>
I'm unclear on the economics of this attack; we spent a bit of time talking
about it a few months ago at CoinLab and decided not to worry about it for
right now.
Does it have asymmetric payoff for an attacker, that is, over time does it
pay them more to spend their hashes attacking than just mining?
My gut is that it pays less well than mining, meaning I think this is
likely a small problem in the aggregate, and certainly not something we
should try and fork the blockchain for until there's real pain.
Consider, for instance, whether it pays better than just mining bitcoins
and spending those on 'bonuses' for getting users to switch from a pool you
hate.
Watson, I don't believe the attack signature you mention is a factor here,
since the pool controls the merkle, only that pool will benefit from block
submission. The nonce / coinbase combo is worthless otherwise, and so this
attack is just in brief "get lucky, but don't submit."
So, can anyone enlighten me as to some actual estimates of badness for this
attack?
Peter
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Peter Vessenes [ARCHIVE] /
npub1ez…6r8pt
2023-06-07 10:11:31
in reply to nevent1q…r99m
Author Public Key
npub1ezg54d03a7unwu0fckmlugxulukrg06x7jzx4engngxfg79sfcqsn6r8ptPublished at
2023-06-07 10:11:31Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2012-06-03\n📝 Original message:On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 8:52 PM, Luke-Jr \u003cluke at dashjr.org\u003e wrote:\n\n\u003e Analysis, comments, constructive criticism, etc welcome for the following:\n\u003e\n\u003e ==Background==\n\u003e At present, an attacker can harm a pool by intentionally NOT submitting\n\u003e shares\n\u003e that are also valid blocks. All pools are vulnerable to this attack,\n\u003e whether\n\u003e centralized or decentralized and regardless of reward system used. The\n\u003e attack's effectiveness is proportional to ratio of the attacker's hashrate\n\u003e to\n\u003e the rest of the pool.\n\u003e\n\u003e\nI'm unclear on the economics of this attack; we spent a bit of time talking\nabout it a few months ago at CoinLab and decided not to worry about it for\nright now.\n\nDoes it have asymmetric payoff for an attacker, that is, over time does it\npay them more to spend their hashes attacking than just mining?\n\nMy gut is that it pays less well than mining, meaning I think this is\nlikely a small problem in the aggregate, and certainly not something we\nshould try and fork the blockchain for until there's real pain.\n\nConsider, for instance, whether it pays better than just mining bitcoins\nand spending those on 'bonuses' for getting users to switch from a pool you\nhate.\n\nWatson, I don't believe the attack signature you mention is a factor here,\nsince the pool controls the merkle, only that pool will benefit from block\nsubmission. The nonce / coinbase combo is worthless otherwise, and so this\nattack is just in brief \"get lucky, but don't submit.\"\n\nSo, can anyone enlighten me as to some actual estimates of badness for this\nattack?\n\nPeter\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20120603/40300cbd/attachment.html\u003e",
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