8 ms·

>I think it is especially reasonable to assume that Bitcoin exists with the tacit consent of the United States National Security Agency, even if the NSA didn't

by GuiA 14y ago

>I think it is especially reasonable to assume that Bitcoin exists with the tacit consent of the United States National Security Agency, even if the NSA didn't invent Bitcoin. How so? If the NSA really hated bitcoin, what would they do? Even if it were made illegal in the US, the United States are not the world, and it would be extremely hard to enforce.

betterunix 14y ago
They could buy a bunch of ASICs, keep pulling off double spending attacks until everyone loses confidence in the Bitcoin system, and call it a day.
- cinquemb 14y ago
  Heres more on double spending attack vectors: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending But heres the question: how long would it take for governmental bureaucracy to amass the resources to execute such an attack without raising a flags from other nodes who then will take proactive measures to not only mitigate such attacks but also alert others nodes on the network?
  - betterunix 14y ago
    "But heres the question: how long would it take for governmental bureaucracy to amass the resources to execute such an attack without raising a flags from other nodes who then will take proactive measures to not only mitigate such attacks but also alert others nodes on the network?" Do you really thing that purchasing a hundred million dollars worth of ASICs would alert anyone? The government spends far more than that in a given year, and there are government agencies that are good at keeping secret operations of that size secret. I would not rely on the inefficiency of bureaucracy when it comes to equipment procurement, certainly not as a security measure. Also, what exactly would the honest nodes do to mitigate the attack? They can only buy more computing power to try to maintain control of the block chain. That is the real problem here: the effort needed to run the Bitcoin network is proportional to the effort needed to attack the system.
    - cinquemb 14y ago
      This goes into cancer nodes: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Cancer_nodes https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Cancer_nodes "It's trivial for an attacker to fill the network with clients controlled by him. This might be helpful in the execution of other attacks. For example, an attacker might connect 100,000 IP addresses to the IRC bootstrap channel. You would then be very likely to connect only to attacker nodes. This state can be exploited in (at least) the following ways: The attacker can refuse to relay blocks and transactions from everyone, disconnecting you from the network. The attacker can relay only blocks that he creates, putting you on a separate network. You're then open to double-spending attacks. If you rely on transactions with 0 confirmations, the attacker can just filter out certain transactions to execute a double-spending attack. Low-latency encryption/anonymization of Bitcoin's transmissions (With Tor, JAP, etc.) can be defeated relatively easy with a timing attack if you're connected to several of the attacker's nodes and the attacker is watching your transmissions at your ISP. Bitcoin makes these attacks more difficult by only making an outbound connection to one IP address per /16 (x.y.0.0). Incoming connections are unlimited and unregulated, but this is generally only a problem in the anonymity case, where you're probably already unable to accept incoming connections. Looking for suspiciously low network hash-rates may help prevent the second one. " One could even go further to do signal analysis on the network looking for nodes whose hash rates are more similar than others and hash rates per period of time (which will happen if such a large scale operation were in process), point them out to other nodes, and require that that node verify themselves with information which could allow for an independent audit by others before unflagging the node(s) in question. EDIT: if anyone is interested in possible working on an open source project for rogue node mitigation that miners can install on their rigs, im game :P besides i think it would be more fun than going solo with my algos on the BTCUSD cross exchanges :P
  - DennisP 14y ago
    Those ASICs just hash SHA-256, which isn't specific to bitcoin. The NSA probably has enough of those already, for other purposes.
    - fsckin 14y ago
      It's actually double hashed - sha256(sha256(x)). So any asic they already have wont be optimized for bitcoin.
    - rmc 14y ago
      Or know mathematical weaknesses in it. The NSA is one of the largest employers of mathematicians in the world. They don't sit around doing Sudoku all day.
      - XorNot 14y ago
        It's probably pretty popular in the break room though.
mcantelon 14y ago
>If the NSA really hated bitcoin, what would they do? Well, the NSA couldn't do much, but the federal government could. The CIA could set up Bitcoin exchanges then have them "hacked" for one thing.
hnolable 14y ago
NSA, China, Russia, most governments really, and possibly a lot of banks, could do a 51% attack and shut down transaction processing... or do double spends, but shutting down all transaction processing seems more damaging. This won't ever change, unless Bitcoin really causes governments to lose most of their power and money. Edit: gavin has a plan (http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack...) but my guess is if they did the work to start an attack in the first place they'd have planned for gavin's plan and acquired enough older coins to foil it. It'd be nice if more thought went into other ways to thwart a possible attack but I'm not sure there really are any. Most people seem to discount and completely avoid the issue.
- hallowtech 14y ago
  Maybe they're in the process of gathering their coins!
- bitcartel 14y ago
  Folk might want to print out Bitcoin wallets or store devices in a Faraday cage... in the unlikely event Kim Jong-Un pulls a wild card! :-) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/19/north-korea-emp-attack-could-destroy-us-now/?page=all http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/19/north-korea-...
  - nightpool 14y ago
    They'd be useless without a hard-copy block chain to back them up.
    - eric_bullington 14y ago
      Forgive me if this is a joke that I'm not getting, but they wouldn't be useless at all: 1) Bitcoin is a p2p distributed network with nodes all over the world. Even if a nuclear attack took out the entire US, the network would continue to work as long as segments of the Internet did (and recall that the Internet was originally designed to protect US data networks from nuclear attack). 2) It's quite simple to spend Bitcoins as long as you have access to a Bitcoin node (see above) and a copy of the 32-byte private key string corresponding to the public Bitcoin address the coins were sent to. This short string of characters can be written on paper, etched into stone, whatever.
JumpCrisscross 14y ago
"even if [bitcoins] were made illegal in the US, the United States are not the world, and it would be extremely hard to enforce" Blacklist the Bitcoin exchanges and any foreign financial institution that transacts with them from the U.S. financial system. The script was updated with the twin salvos against online gambling and Iran.
- throwawayG9 14y ago
  More reasons to use Bitcoin.
  - cinquemb 14y ago
    I like that you said use and not hoard :P
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ryanhuff 14y ago
Governments could tax all bitcoin transactions that go through a centralized entity (such as Mt. Gox) a non-trivial amount, which would effectively kill it as a mainstream currency.

by GuiA 14y ago

betterunix 14y ago

They could buy a bunch of ASICs, keep pulling off double spending attacks until everyone loses confidence in the Bitcoin system, and call it a day.

cinquemb 14y ago
Heres more on double spending attack vectors: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending But heres the question: how long would it take for governmental bureaucracy to amass the resources to execute such an attack without raising a flags from other nodes who then will take proactive measures to not only mitigate such attacks but also alert others nodes on the network?
- betterunix 14y ago
  "But heres the question: how long would it take for governmental bureaucracy to amass the resources to execute such an attack without raising a flags from other nodes who then will take proactive measures to not only mitigate such attacks but also alert others nodes on the network?" Do you really thing that purchasing a hundred million dollars worth of ASICs would alert anyone? The government spends far more than that in a given year, and there are government agencies that are good at keeping secret operations of that size secret. I would not rely on the inefficiency of bureaucracy when it comes to equipment procurement, certainly not as a security measure. Also, what exactly would the honest nodes do to mitigate the attack? They can only buy more computing power to try to maintain control of the block chain. That is the real problem here: the effort needed to run the Bitcoin network is proportional to the effort needed to attack the system.
  - cinquemb 14y ago
    This goes into cancer nodes: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Cancer_nodes https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Cancer_nodes "It's trivial for an attacker to fill the network with clients controlled by him. This might be helpful in the execution of other attacks. For example, an attacker might connect 100,000 IP addresses to the IRC bootstrap channel. You would then be very likely to connect only to attacker nodes. This state can be exploited in (at least) the following ways: The attacker can refuse to relay blocks and transactions from everyone, disconnecting you from the network. The attacker can relay only blocks that he creates, putting you on a separate network. You're then open to double-spending attacks. If you rely on transactions with 0 confirmations, the attacker can just filter out certain transactions to execute a double-spending attack. Low-latency encryption/anonymization of Bitcoin's transmissions (With Tor, JAP, etc.) can be defeated relatively easy with a timing attack if you're connected to several of the attacker's nodes and the attacker is watching your transmissions at your ISP. Bitcoin makes these attacks more difficult by only making an outbound connection to one IP address per /16 (x.y.0.0). Incoming connections are unlimited and unregulated, but this is generally only a problem in the anonymity case, where you're probably already unable to accept incoming connections. Looking for suspiciously low network hash-rates may help prevent the second one. " One could even go further to do signal analysis on the network looking for nodes whose hash rates are more similar than others and hash rates per period of time (which will happen if such a large scale operation were in process), point them out to other nodes, and require that that node verify themselves with information which could allow for an independent audit by others before unflagging the node(s) in question. EDIT: if anyone is interested in possible working on an open source project for rogue node mitigation that miners can install on their rigs, im game :P besides i think it would be more fun than going solo with my algos on the BTCUSD cross exchanges :P
- DennisP 14y ago
  Those ASICs just hash SHA-256, which isn't specific to bitcoin. The NSA probably has enough of those already, for other purposes.
  - fsckin 14y ago
    It's actually double hashed - sha256(sha256(x)). So any asic they already have wont be optimized for bitcoin.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Or know mathematical weaknesses in it. The NSA is one of the largest employers of mathematicians in the world. They don't sit around doing Sudoku all day.
    - XorNot 14y ago
      It's probably pretty popular in the break room though.

mcantelon 14y ago

>If the NSA really hated bitcoin, what would they do? Well, the NSA couldn't do much, but the federal government could. The CIA could set up Bitcoin exchanges then have them "hacked" for one thing.

hnolable 14y ago

NSA, China, Russia, most governments really, and possibly a lot of banks, could do a 51% attack and shut down transaction processing... or do double spends, but shutting down all transaction processing seems more damaging. This won't ever change, unless Bitcoin really causes governments to lose most of their power and money. Edit: gavin has a plan (http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack...) but my guess is if they did the work to start an attack in the first place they'd have planned for gavin's plan and acquired enough older coins to foil it. It'd be nice if more thought went into other ways to thwart a possible attack but I'm not sure there really are any. Most people seem to discount and completely avoid the issue.

hallowtech 14y ago
Maybe they're in the process of gathering their coins!
bitcartel 14y ago
Folk might want to print out Bitcoin wallets or store devices in a Faraday cage... in the unlikely event Kim Jong-Un pulls a wild card! :-) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/19/north-korea-emp-attack-could-destroy-us-now/?page=all http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/19/north-korea-...
- nightpool 14y ago
  They'd be useless without a hard-copy block chain to back them up.
  - eric_bullington 14y ago
    Forgive me if this is a joke that I'm not getting, but they wouldn't be useless at all: 1) Bitcoin is a p2p distributed network with nodes all over the world. Even if a nuclear attack took out the entire US, the network would continue to work as long as segments of the Internet did (and recall that the Internet was originally designed to protect US data networks from nuclear attack). 2) It's quite simple to spend Bitcoins as long as you have access to a Bitcoin node (see above) and a copy of the 32-byte private key string corresponding to the public Bitcoin address the coins were sent to. This short string of characters can be written on paper, etched into stone, whatever.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago

"even if [bitcoins] were made illegal in the US, the United States are not the world, and it would be extremely hard to enforce" Blacklist the Bitcoin exchanges and any foreign financial institution that transacts with them from the U.S. financial system. The script was updated with the twin salvos against online gambling and Iran.

throwawayG9 14y ago
More reasons to use Bitcoin.
- cinquemb 14y ago
  I like that you said use and not hoard :P

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ryanhuff 14y ago

Governments could tax all bitcoin transactions that go through a centralized entity (such as Mt. Gox) a non-trivial amount, which would effectively kill it as a mainstream currency.