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Oh this is barely scratching the surface. This is a ton of random information on the blockchain, including stuff which is highly illegal globally. In fact, I r
by kjrose 6y ago
Oh this is barely scratching the surface. This is a ton of random information on the blockchain, including stuff which is highly illegal globally. In fact, I remember when a group was actively putting certain photos and such as an attempt to see if they would make having large chunks of the blockchain become illegal because you would possess this data.
I didn't follow it for too long, but I'm pretty sure no one found a way to remove it.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoOnce you need a custom client that's programmed to stitch together arbitrary bytes stored across N transactions to reproduce a bad image, it doesn't seem to be much different or any less savory than writing one that can find the same bytes from specific offsets across N articles on nytimes.com or one that plucks them out of a stream from /dev/random. The inaccessibility of viewing this data seems to make the world of difference versus, say, looking at the images that appear in your web browser when you go to badsite.com.
- kjrose 6y agowell, and you'd need to know all the places they put them.
- nefitty 6y agoWhat about some sort of index placed at different intervals for easier discoverability
- kart23 6y agoEh, some explorers do show op_return data in ASCII, so you could definitely see messages in a browser without too much work or a 'custom client'. From an example thats in the article, click on details and look at OP_RETURN: https://mempool.space/tx/0540b5dda23ee870330c6b1e18a88c592cf8d847c47f1dc1d5328f46115b12b3 https://mempool.space/tx/0540b5dda23ee870330c6b1e18a88c592cf...
- hombre_fatal 6y agoYes, but that's just ASCII. What is your idea of a 80 byte globally illegal ASCII message that isn't just a URL elsewhere?
- tick_tock_tick 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...
- sneak 6y agoX5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H* I haven't scanned the blockchain lately but I'd be surprised if this isn't in there already.
- spinny 6y agoit is, just like many other sig that will trip the AV and delete the blockchain. if running on windows it's a good idea to add the btc data dir to the av exclusion list
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y agoNot necessary, Bitcoin Core obfuscates the data on disk for the very same reason which we're discussing here :)
- sneak 6y agoIndeed. Schneier even made this bogus "illegal data in the blockchain" style claim recently.
- twox2 6y agoI think the difference is that the bitcoin blockchain might outlive a certain article being accessible on nytimes. The nytiems article can be edited, blockchain data not as much.
- sneak 6y ago"Highly illegal" always sets off my breathless sensationalism detector in the same way that "heavily encrypted" does.
- cirosantilli 6y agoNot doubting you, but I'm really curious how that highly illegal data is encoded, because for the life of me, I couldn't find it :-)