Double-spend Attack on some Proof of Work Coins stopped by Bittrex
Attackers chosen coins that are traded on big exchanges (in this case our friends from Bittrex) and made a double spend attack due to owning more than 51% hashes needed.
While technology behind the attack is not easy to explain it does what it says - makes a double spend of same money.
Imagine buying something, then getting money back right away.
This way hackers (or more like attackers) with big hashing power choose coins that will be easy enough for them to get money on.
Currently only CANN (CannabisCoin) market is still disabled which means Bittrex team acted fast and fixed attack problems with developers.
This is why its a good idea to not make PoW coins unless you are sure of big hashing power but rather make tokens on other solid networks like Bitshares Ethereum or Bitcoin.
If you know any of low hashrate power PoW coins, keep eye on them - they may be next to be attacked ie on other exchanges.
Follow, Resteem and VOTE UP @kingscrown creator of http://fuk.io blog for 0day cryptocurrency news and tips! |
 |
|---|
This is the problem with coins that do not have the backing of the Bitcoin miner network (or similarly staking network). There is a reason that Bitcoins are worth what they are today. On these smaller coins with only a few hundred thousand dollars of 'hashpower' going for them are insanely easy to attack - as demonstrated. That is why these coins are not worth that of a Bitcoin.
The security of the millions of dollars of 'wasted energy' is why there are no Bitcoin double spends in the news.
That's a problem only related to Poof of Work which is not a good protocol for any coins, specially new ones.
Well yes and no. There is probably only room for one POW coin in the world. POW has very strong assertions about the requirements to attack the chain. POS or any other system employs tradeoffs.
That said POW is not novel and no new coin should center their consensus protocol around it.
@kingscrown @kyle.anderson Thank You Both 4 Your Heads-Up !!
UpVoted You Both & Following You Both & ReSteemed
Have a Great Weekend !!
Good point Kyle...thanks for sharing
true talk
Anybody care to go into more detail on explaining a double spend/51% attack? Interested in knowing more for sure. Will do a little digging myself obviously.
Nice that you got interested, read here for start - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending and then go digging more in google
Will do! Thanks so much. Down the rabbit hole I go :)
See you in few days haha.
At least its weekend ;)
Hahahah, I need to avoid too many rabbit holes this weekend. Heading out to Italy for the next couple weeks...Wife probably won't like my face in my phone screen ;)
What you can do is to get a beanie, a bluetooth earphones and a pair of sunglasses. Put all your research into a big word document, do text-to-speech and just listen to them on your earphones that are hidden underneath your beanie.
Oh and the pair of sunnies is to hide your eyes when they become wider with excitements...
Hahahah. The public will have no idea im learning about blockchain...instead they'll wonder why this crazy guy keeps having his mind blow lol
Yep, that wiki article cleared everything up. Thanks again!
Thanks for providing the info about double spending, makes more sense now
Thanks for the explanation @kingscrown! Now i finally fully understand 51% attacks.
Enjoy :) With big 51% attack you can even fork a coin, but in this case they wanted to make fast transactions and thats it
Baster&^&^s, good that they didn't get away with it!
Whew glad I dumped CANN a few weeks back! lawls!
My sell orders hit 5 days ago exactly so im good too.
They will fix it and it will get back on its feet im sure - as others did too
I should have done that !!
Im with you! Just a few days ago, i was impatient and sold.
Im hope the coins recover, cause man, that's still unfortunate.
Your the best @kingscrown! This definitely will help a ton of people in the crypto community, including myself!
you rule :)
Just trying to keep my hand on trigger if something nasty happens
Thanks for info!
I LOVE how you underline the power of Bitshares in the end there. Nice job!
Thanks, namaste :)
Good to know about Bittrex team, + in Karma and trust.
Thank you. In a way this explains the reason for so many ETH tokens being seen of late
Those are still backed by the POW of ETH. Not likely to be any worries there. Except for the scams that many ICOs are in the first place.