More Bitcoin Exchanges Forced Out of Sync After Massive DDoS Attack 135
An anonymous reader tipped us to news that several Bitcoin exchanges have joined Mt Gox in suspending withdrawals after being forced out of sync with the Bitcoin network at large. After Mt Gox blamed transaction malleability for forcing them to suspend withdrawals, miscreants started flooding at least Bitpay and Btc-e with bogus transactions. Quoting the Bitcoin Foundation: "Somebody (or several somebodies) is taking advantage of the transaction malleability issue and relaying mutated versions of transactions. This is exposing bugs in both the reference implementation and some exchange’s software. We (core dev team, developers at the exchanges, and even big mining pools) are creating workarounds and fixes right now. This is a denial-of-service attack; whoever is doing this is not stealing coins, but is succeeding in preventing some transactions from confirming. It’s important to note that DoS attacks do not affect people’s bitcoin wallets or funds. "
the value in Bitcoin is in transactions (Score:2, Funny)
stop the transactions, you hurt the value. This is a Fed operation, because they can't control it they're trying to destroy it and make it look like script kiddies. So fucking transparent...
Re:the value in Bitcoin is in transactions (Score:5, Funny)
Now that the NSA can't store and process user's private data, they have to do _something_ with those datacenters, right?
The problem with Bitcoin (Score:2, Funny)
Totally decentralised systems, looked at through the viewpoint of 19th century analysis and stats, can seem to work by limiting the control to infinity. in reality there is no infinity to limit it to, this is just a useful figment of mathematicians imaginations when counting stuff is impractical. Somebody's actions will always control the balance of the random behaviours that lie behind bitcoin. The problem then is that this control point will move around essentially near-chaotically. The bitcoin network will have a weak mind of its own, and behave with the complexity of a small insect rummaging around looking for food. A mass of bitcoin like systems will evolve to work together like an army of ants. Basically the abstract model of an ant colony from which nature derives real ants, is trying to evolve itself on the internet. Bitcoin is the begining of a virtual bit-ant infestation. There is a place for ants, but the world finance system is not one of them.