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I thought the 'malleability' problem only resulted in miners being DDOS'd. The transactions themselves were supposedly still 'intact' - i.e., inputs, outputs, a

I thought the 'malleability' problem only resulted in miners being DDOS'd. The transactions themselves were supposedly still 'intact' - i.e., inputs, outputs, addresses were not modified. So.... what are SR2 saying happened here? - Is it a double spend using SR2 escrow bitcoins? - How was the malleability introduced?

pmorici 13y ago
There are two potential issues with the malleability. One is the MtGox problem where you might not realize a transaction was successful and you are duped into sending the money twice. The second issue is a bug that was discovered in the reference client where if you try to spend coins you sent to yourself before they are confirmed a bug in the wallet causes your balance to be off. Neither problem inherently allows theft but if you aren't careful the first can open your to social engineering. The reason they are calling this a dos as far as I can tell is because they are preventing you from spending your money until the bug is fixed with the accounting in the reference wallet. SR2 is probably full of crap but there is a small possibility that they some how automated re-sending of failed transactions w/o properly accounting for malleability in which case you might be able to steal a multiple of the actual amount of money in your account over a few days. The sheer size of this though would make me skeptical of that scenario.
- nullc 13y ago
  > One is the MtGox problem where you might not realize a transaction was successful and you are duped into sending the money twice. This isn't really a malleability issue however. Lets say it wasn't successful: You send again. Opps, someone pulls the original out of a hat and both go through. The only way to safely reissue is to double spend the original transaction. Then you get atomic exclusion, and it's completely safe: only one can possibly get into the longest chain. This safety still applies if there is mutation going on.
pat2man 13y ago
The "hack" would involve withdrawing money, changing the hash of the transaction and then complaining that the transaction didn't go through. This was done through the support channels on Mt. Gox etc but technically could have been an automated system on silk road 2. Not likely though.
- nullc 13y ago
  MTGox's reissuing was automated and running on a timer, fwiw.
bestdayever 13y ago
I think the idea would be that you would withdraw from escrow, manipulate the transaction to change the transaction id (which they shouldn't be relying on if they use bitcoind and makes the whole thing kinda fishy) then when SR can't find the transaction it assumes it failed and sends again or he opens a ticket saying he never got his funds and they send them again manually.

pmorici 13y ago

There are two potential issues with the malleability. One is the MtGox problem where you might not realize a transaction was successful and you are duped into sending the money twice. The second issue is a bug that was discovered in the reference client where if you try to spend coins you sent to yourself before they are confirmed a bug in the wallet causes your balance to be off. Neither problem inherently allows theft but if you aren't careful the first can open your to social engineering. The reason they are calling this a dos as far as I can tell is because they are preventing you from spending your money until the bug is fixed with the accounting in the reference wallet. SR2 is probably full of crap but there is a small possibility that they some how automated re-sending of failed transactions w/o properly accounting for malleability in which case you might be able to steal a multiple of the actual amount of money in your account over a few days. The sheer size of this though would make me skeptical of that scenario.

nullc 13y ago
> One is the MtGox problem where you might not realize a transaction was successful and you are duped into sending the money twice. This isn't really a malleability issue however. Lets say it wasn't successful: You send again. Opps, someone pulls the original out of a hat and both go through. The only way to safely reissue is to double spend the original transaction. Then you get atomic exclusion, and it's completely safe: only one can possibly get into the longest chain. This safety still applies if there is mutation going on.

pat2man 13y ago

The "hack" would involve withdrawing money, changing the hash of the transaction and then complaining that the transaction didn't go through. This was done through the support channels on Mt. Gox etc but technically could have been an automated system on silk road 2. Not likely though.

nullc 13y ago
MTGox's reissuing was automated and running on a timer, fwiw.

bestdayever 13y ago

I think the idea would be that you would withdraw from escrow, manipulate the transaction to change the transaction id (which they shouldn't be relying on if they use bitcoind and makes the whole thing kinda fishy) then when SR can't find the transaction it assumes it failed and sends again or he opens a ticket saying he never got his funds and they send them again manually.