So basically when you are signalling for some block like
BU or Segwit they can force stop whatever the block your mining
that is not favorable to them. That explains everything you probably change your mining software if it's antminer.
Topic: Antbleed: A remote shutdown backdoor in antminers - page 7. (Read 8124 times)
The issue of voting with your wallet when it comes to mining equipment is that whoever sells the best possible chance at ROI will dominate and with the Chinese labor and access of materials it's going to be Bitmain.
I agree. That's why I think this has to be handled with an algorithm change. Which frankly scares me with something on the economic scale of Bitcoin. Except that doing nothing with things as they are scares me worse. I don't see BTU shills here. Appears not only Bitmain has an Antbleed and could shutdown antminers, but they also have a Shillbleed and can disable/anable their shills on demand. 
Man, I was thinking the same thing, where's franky and jonald?
This seals the deal. Jihan Wu is not some bright kid that started an empire by himself. This has been a Chinese government funded takeover by default to control bitcoin. Are we going to let them get away with it?
I know PoW change is an huge deal, but isn't doing nothing worse in the long term? Wake up people.
I know PoW change is an huge deal, but isn't doing nothing worse in the long term? Wake up people.
That is an interesting setting in there your right this is an exploit.
Hopefully the exploit does not result in a mining brick but seeing there is an economic incentive its concerning.
Hopefully the exploit does not result in a mining brick but seeing there is an economic incentive its concerning.
Quite the issue with Bitmain so entangled in the anti segwit and wanting to control Bitcoin future. Bitmain has shown us what can happen when you have one mining company with most of the hardware. Really wishing we were on GPUs still when shit like this happens, but an algorithm change is not the answer (although I would love to see jihan after an algorithm change)
I don't see BTU shills here. Appears not only Bitmain has an Antbleed and could shutdown antminers, but they also have a Shillbleed and can disable/anable their shills on demand.
Man, I was thinking the same thing, where's franky and jonald?
....
This is very very old 'news' and been mentioned lord how many times in the past.
As mentioned earlier it was for the Minerlink service. The early s7's used to have a page on the Bitmain GUI to set it, was removed after maybe batch-10 or so.
Like ANY remote monitor program/service (Awesome Miner comes to mind) the miners must periodically be polled to see how they are doing. Only difference here is it was a cloud service and ran by Bitmain.
As posted earlier: If ya don't like it just re-direct the query to localhost. 'Problem' solved.
Yes for whatever reason, the code still remains and YES Bitmain should remove it since it serves no purpose and is a needless 'possible feature'.
This is very very old 'news' and been mentioned lord how many times in the past.
As mentioned earlier it was for the Minerlink service. The early s7's used to have a page on the Bitmain GUI to set it, was removed after maybe batch-10 or so.
Like ANY remote monitor program/service (Awesome Miner comes to mind) the miners must periodically be polled to see how they are doing. Only difference here is it was a cloud service and ran by Bitmain.
As posted earlier: If ya don't like it just re-direct the query to localhost. 'Problem' solved.
Yes for whatever reason, the code still remains and YES Bitmain should remove it since it serves no purpose and is a needless 'possible feature'.
And antbleed.com needs to modify their statements about what miners have it. I will verify tomorrow but am POSITIVE my few remaining batch-1, 3, and 5 s7's have the MinerLink option in the GUI.
This issue is unrelated to minerlink even though it uses the same domain. It is not a user configurable option, there is nothing in any user interface (be that GUI or command line) to enable or disable this phone home and remote kill. The URL and port are entirely hard coded into the software, and the loop that does the phone home will always run. This is not Minerlink where you had the option to use it. This phone home will occur regardless of whether you use minerlink or not.
I don't see BTU shills here. Appears not only Bitmain has an Antbleed and could shutdown antminers, but they also have a Shillbleed and can disable/anable their shills on demand.
So if I understood it correctly, bitmain has a remote kill-switch (effectively, since they can brick the machines with the firmware change) on 70% of hashrate? fanastic. What are we supposed to do now, other than change the PoW algo immediately? Core Devs should be having a meeting with non-Bitmain miners right now proposing a roadmap to change the algo and leave Bitmain isolated. I don't think even the BU camp is stupid enough to keep supporting Jihan and his rigged miners anymore.
Anything but open source mining machines should be totally banned from the network. Ideally we should go back to 1cpu=1miner with a new PoW, but how do we guarantee that we will not end up like this again? at least we'll set a precedent I guess.
Anyway, I hope Core Devs are already on this like I said before. We can't go no longer than a week sitting under explosives.
Anything but open source mining machines should be totally banned from the network. Ideally we should go back to 1cpu=1miner with a new PoW, but how do we guarantee that we will not end up like this again? at least we'll set a precedent I guess.
Anyway, I hope Core Devs are already on this like I said before. We can't go no longer than a week sitting under explosives.
There is already an easy way to mitigate the risks associated with Antbleed (http://www.antbleed.com/), as pointed out earlier in this thread:
Quote
How Can I Protect Myself?
The easiest way to make sure your Antminer is not vulnerable to this backdoor is to add the following to your /etc/hosts on the device to
This will cause the Antminer to connect to your own local machine bypassing the check-in with Bitmain without interrupting normal mining behavior.
The easiest way to make sure your Antminer is not vulnerable to this backdoor is to add the following to your /etc/hosts on the device to
Code:
127.0.0.1 auth.minerlink.com
This will cause the Antminer to connect to your own local machine bypassing the check-in with Bitmain without interrupting normal mining behavior.
Furthermore, Bitcoin currently has a market cap of close to $21 billion. To rush into knee-jerk reactions like changing Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm would be catastrophic for Bitcoin and the people who rely on it. Take the Venezuelans, for example (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-in-south-america-why-venezuela-has-an-active-bitcoin-mining-community-1452097837/). They have turned to Bitcoin mining, at great risk of arrest, to make for themselves a living in response to Venezuela's intensifying political turmoil and rapidly contracting economy (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/04/venezuelans-turned-bitcoin-mining-170415124105593.html). To suddenly change Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm would mean pulling the rug out from under their feet and leave them hanging at the mercy of their government's failures.
It would therefore be wise to consider the greater global landscape of Bitcoin and the people who rely on it before pushing for unnecessarily risky moves.
How is sitting under a ground that is 70% filled with mines not a risky move? I don't think you are considering the gravity of the situation.
If we don't wipe the ASIC nonsense out, what are we doing but delaying the problem?
How long until such a thing happens again, goes unnoticed, but they decide brick the entire network?
At the same time, I understand changing the PoW is an huge problem within itself....
Honestly there is no easy way out. We should have taken care of this earlier, now there is no easy way out from this mess. So pick your poison.
And antbleed.com needs to modify their statements about what miners have it. I will verify tomorrow but am POSITIVE my few remaining batch-1, 3, and 5 s7's have the MinerLink option in the GUI.
Do these miners really represent 70% of all the global hashrate?
I am sure they are people still mining with Antminer S2 with free power at their dorm or people got some SP30 running in some cheap power areas.
I am sure they are people still mining with Antminer S2 with free power at their dorm or people got some SP30 running in some cheap power areas.
1. We should give BitMain the benefit of the doubt, but we should also demand answers to hard questions. Once the original functionality was no longer viable it really should have been eliminated via a firmware upgrade. Why didn't they recognize this vulnerability and act to protect their customers?
2. A sudden change of PoW would be catastrophic and should not be an option. However, a roadmap to a non-ASIC future should be considered, with the shift happening ~1 year out to give current miners time to ROI with current hardware.
2. A sudden change of PoW would be catastrophic and should not be an option. However, a roadmap to a non-ASIC future should be considered, with the shift happening ~1 year out to give current miners time to ROI with current hardware.
....
This is very very old 'news' and been mentioned lord how many times in the past.
As mentioned earlier it was for the Minerlink service. The early s7's used to have a page on the Bitmain GUI to set it, was removed after maybe batch-10 or so.
Like ANY remote monitor program/service (Awesome Miner comes to mind) the miners must periodically be polled to see how they are doing. Only difference here is it was a cloud service and ran by Bitmain.
As posted earlier: If ya don't like it just re-direct the query to localhost. 'Problem' solved.
Yes for whatever reason, the code still remains and YES Bitmain should remove it since it serves no purpose and is a needless 'possible feature'.
This is very very old 'news' and been mentioned lord how many times in the past.
As mentioned earlier it was for the Minerlink service. The early s7's used to have a page on the Bitmain GUI to set it, was removed after maybe batch-10 or so.
Like ANY remote monitor program/service (Awesome Miner comes to mind) the miners must periodically be polled to see how they are doing. Only difference here is it was a cloud service and ran by Bitmain.
As posted earlier: If ya don't like it just re-direct the query to localhost. 'Problem' solved.
Yes for whatever reason, the code still remains and YES Bitmain should remove it since it serves no purpose and is a needless 'possible feature'.
Holy moly dude, why did they have to try and make some kind of interlinking network system for their hardware? Why couldn't they have left it like it was before? Enough people were able to use it that I don't see why they would have to change it for any reason.
Whatever. It's not like I can change anything by posting on a forum. I just hope they fix it up and stop trying to do stuff like this. Otherwise it might get worse when it comes to exploits.
Whatever. It's not like I can change anything by posting on a forum. I just hope they fix it up and stop trying to do stuff like this. Otherwise it might get worse when it comes to exploits.
But to me this sounds like a way for Jihan to be able to kill BTC at any given time. How the fuck we managed to not notice this earlier? this is a disaster. Imagine if Jihan got paid by PBOC trillions to brick all the ASICs at once...
Not even just Jihan. The code doesn't properly authenticate the server. Any random asshole with MITM can switch off ASIC's. The chinese government could turn off all antminers GLOBALLY using the Chinese firewall to MITM the phone home connections. Anyone in the world with access to a BGP router can do it. Anyone who can MITM the connection between the ASIC and bitmain can do it.
This is absolutely fucked. I think there is a real good argument to be made to change the PoW algorithm to something that is harder to build custom hardware for, something like Cuckoo Cycle. This is only the beginning of shit like this, it'll only get worse from here on. For the first time since 2011, I am bearish on the future of Bitcoin. We really need to address the problem of mining centralization, this is our biggest threat right now and it's not an easy one to fight.
Holy shit
Makes one wonder what else we don't know, what we have overlooked...
Plz vote in my poll. "Is franky1 a shill?" https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-franky1-a-shill-1874675
Quote
So Sergio and Slush both noticed that there's a remote code execution vulnerability in this backdoor. The backdoor has NO authentication, so any MITM attacker or DNS attacker can trigger it.
With remote code execution you can reflash the firmware on those miners, and once you do that you can permanently brick them. In fact, it's almost certain that you could permanently destroy the HW - I used to work as an electronics designer, and I did that by accident w/ bad firmware quite a few times.
So tl;dr: we have a backdoor that could permanently kill ~70% of the Bitcoin hashing power, and it can be triggered by anyone with MITM capability or the ability to change DNS records.
With remote code execution you can reflash the firmware on those miners, and once you do that you can permanently brick them. In fact, it's almost certain that you could permanently destroy the HW - I used to work as an electronics designer, and I did that by accident w/ bad firmware quite a few times.
So tl;dr: we have a backdoor that could permanently kill ~70% of the Bitcoin hashing power, and it can be triggered by anyone with MITM capability or the ability to change DNS records.
Makes one wonder what else we don't know, what we have overlooked...
Plz vote in my poll. "Is franky1 a shill?" https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-franky1-a-shill-1874675
Who is naive enough to think this was only a mistake that was left there without fixing?
In order to remain objective, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed no malice (I'm pretty sure gentlemand is quoting me from my responses on reddit).Looks like an obvious kill-switch to me. Why did no one see this yet? Isn't firmware code open source? Im not sure how this works, so im going to need more data. But to me this sounds like a way for Jihan to be able to kill BTC at any given time. How the fuck we managed to not notice this earlier? this is a disaster. Imagine if Jihan got paid by PBOC trillions to brick all the ASICs at once...
The firmware is fairly difficult to read. The code paths involved here are quite odd and not really intuitive, although once you know what you are looking for, it is fairly obvious. The phone home code was well known beforehand as that is fairly obvious, but that it can cause a remote stopping of mining was unknown. So if I understood it correctly, bitmain has a remote kill-switch (effectively, since they can brick the machines with the firmware change) on 70% of hashrate? fanastic. What are we supposed to do now, other than change the PoW algo immediately?
It looks like it can be blocked with a change of code. And it also looks like it's an old feature named Minerlink that was never put into action but left there to fester. That's giving the benefit of the doubt of course. Regardless, leaving a gaping hole like that isn't doing anyone any favours.
Who is naive enough to think this was only a mistake that was left there without fixing? Looks like an obvious kill-switch to me. Why did no one see this yet? Isn't firmware code open source? Im not sure how this works, so im going to need more data. But to me this sounds like a way for Jihan to be able to kill BTC at any given time. How the fuck we managed to not notice this earlier? this is a disaster. Imagine if Jihan got paid by PBOC trillions to brick all the ASICs at once...
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