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. "
Yeah right (Score:5, Interesting)
It’s important to note that DoS attacks do not affect people’s bitcoin wallets or funds.
Unless of course the exchange rates start dropping because of a declining confidence in the currency.
Re:the value in Bitcoin is in transactions (Score:2, Interesting)
Eating their own, won't be long now... (Score:3, Interesting)
Its been an interesting few days, they're lashing out in fear and attacking their own, it won't be long now, here is a recap of what we saw:
1. MtGox made public that a well known bug which was being ignored by the bitcoin "developers" was being used to steal coins.
2. Almost instantly the "foundation" and "developers" released statements indicating that only MtGox was effected by and at fault and the remainder of the bitcoin ecosystem would not be impacted.
3. We saw a flurry of requests for Mark Karpeles to step down from the "foundation".
4. Suddenly almost all the bitcoin exchanges stopped allowing withdrawls because in contrast to what the "foundation" stated, bitcoin developers were responsible for this bug and it in fact effected the whole ecosystem.
It is very clear that this situation was caused by the bitcoin "developers" lack of interest in securing their code. It is also very clear that they attempted to hide this fact and shift blame to an innocent party.
Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
This may very well affect people's funds and online wallets. If an exchange doesn't find a transaction in the blockchain, because the exchange looks for a different transaction ID, the exchange may have reissued the transaction, effectively paying out twice. As these transactions are not reversible, but not the fault of the customer, the exchange will have to eat the losses. The current Bitcoin exchanges are not huge banks. They're not too big to fail, and when they do fail, they take your funds with them. They may not even have them anymore right now, but you don't know, because you can't withdraw.
Re:Government(s) intervention? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, this potentially benefits legitimate BTC speculators.
We see what's going on. We know that BTC is under attack, and we know it's going to drop, and we suspect it's going to rebound. Time for tech-savvy legitimate investors to make a few gambles as well -- if you're the type that's already gambling on BTC.
One of the things about BTC is that, since it's unregulated, you can't just freeze the exchange rate until the storm blows over. Anarchy!