Bitcoin even more broken than previously thought - page 2.

revans

sr. member

Activity: 336

Merit: 250

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 06:24:15 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 06:09:06 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 06:01:16 PM

Quote from: ?? on ??

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:47:30 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 05:22:59 PM

I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.

You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that?

There was a Namecoin bug which allowed anyone to spend anyone else's namecoins. Basically, the code didn't check to see whether the signature was valid.

It was exploited, and the fix was to allow those transactions in the blockchain but ignore them, and then after a certain block number there is a hard fork.

So, something similar to that is possible, but it's also possible to effectively reverse.

It is not fair to accuse Bitcoin of being insecure because of faults found in alt-coins.

Is it fair for me to have to correct cretins all the time?

Congratulations. You have the honor of being one of the very few people on this forum that were able to tell me something about Bitcoin that I didn't already know. Don't assume that because you knew this little factoid, that you really grok bitcoin on the same level as myself. I'm not a programmer, but nor am I stupid. I was here for years in the company of brilliant people who were actualy building the bitcoin economy; and was able to converse with these same founders before all of this useless noise infested the forum and most of those same brilliant people left the forums. There are now more than 160K registered forum members. I remember having these kinds of arguments with detractors when one of the arguments was, "not even 10K people have even heard of a bitcoin, it'll never even reach parity with the dollar!" Seriously, this isn't even the same forum anymore. It's filled with programmers who don't undertand economics, economists who don't understand human psychology, psycologists who don't understand cryptology, and laymen who don't understand any of it; while they all think they are f*cking polymaths!

Wow, Heinleinisms, you must be like some sort of sooperhackerd00dsavantmuthafukka.

Whilst you may be chagrined to learn this, I'm afraid I must inform you that brilliance is not communicable. You can hang from the coattails of luminaries, but your star shall shine no brighter as a result. Take heed little grasshopper: know thy limits, lest thy limits be known by all.

mootinator

sr. member

Activity: 274

Merit: 250

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 06:20:44 PM

The worst logical fallacy is the misuse of logical fallacies as a way of trying to win in argument.

You're doing it wrong. It's like this.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy

Lauda

legendary

Activity: 2674

Merit: 2965

Terminated.

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:21:18 PM

What color is mine?

The normal one. You aren't ignored. Luckily, mostly because you don't open threads like this one.

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 06:20:44 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 06:11:05 PM

Quote from: halfawake on November 26, 2013, 06:06:43 PM

Quote from: EntropyExtropy on November 26, 2013, 05:09:46 PM

The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.

It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.

Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

It doesn't much matter who the author may be, only what the argument is. Speaking for myself, I very rarely see actual arguments presented on this forum anymore. And when that does happen, it's generally due to a misunderstanding of the protocol by the author. I'm not saying that this article doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have merit because it was presented by a professor from Cornell.

The worst logical fallacy is the misuse of logical fallacies as a way of trying to win in argument. It was not an appeal to authority anyway, as it was not said that this guy is necessarily correct because he is a Cornell professor, rather it was stated that to summarily dismiss his work given his credentials and reputation would be stupid as it seems unlikely he would be making claims he could not defend with solid arguments.

It was implied, and you damn well know it.

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 06:09:06 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 06:01:16 PM

Quote from: ?? on ??

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:47:30 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 05:22:59 PM

I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.

You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that?

There was a Namecoin bug which allowed anyone to spend anyone else's namecoins. Basically, the code didn't check to see whether the signature was valid.

It was exploited, and the fix was to allow those transactions in the blockchain but ignore them, and then after a certain block number there is a hard fork.

So, something similar to that is possible, but it's also possible to effectively reverse.

It is not fair to accuse Bitcoin of being insecure because of faults found in alt-coins.

Is it fair for me to have to correct cretins all the time?

Congratulations. You have the honor of being one of the very few people on this forum that were able to tell me something about Bitcoin that I didn't already know. Don't assume that because you knew this little factoid, that you really grok bitcoin on the same level as myself. I'm not a programmer, but nor am I stupid. I was here for years in the company of brilliant people who were actualy building the bitcoin economy; and was able to converse with these same founders before all of this useless noise infested the forum and most of those same brilliant people left the forums. There are now more than 160K registered forum members. I remember having these kinds of arguments with detractors when one of the arguments was, "not even 10K people have even heard of a bitcoin, it'll never even reach parity with the dollar!" Seriously, this isn't even the same forum anymore. It's filled with programmers who don't undertand economics, economists who don't understand human psychology, psycologists who don't understand cryptology, and laymen who don't understand any of it; while they all think they are f*cking polymaths!

revans

sr. member

Activity: 336

Merit: 250

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 06:11:05 PM

Quote from: halfawake on November 26, 2013, 06:06:43 PM

Quote from: EntropyExtropy on November 26, 2013, 05:09:46 PM

The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.

It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.

Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

It doesn't much matter who the author may be, only what the argument is. Speaking for myself, I very rarely see actual arguments presented on this forum anymore. And when that does happen, it's generally due to a misunderstanding of the protocol by the author. I'm not saying that this article doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have merit because it was presented by a professor from Cornell.

The worst logical fallacy is the misuse of logical fallacies as a way of trying to win in argument. It was not an appeal to authority anyway, as it was not said that this guy is necessarily correct because he is a Cornell professor, rather it was stated that to summarily dismiss his work given his credentials and reputation would be stupid as it seems unlikely he would be making claims he could not defend with solid arguments.

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: halfawake on November 26, 2013, 06:06:43 PM

Quote from: EntropyExtropy on November 26, 2013, 05:09:46 PM

The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.

It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.

Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

It doesn't much matter who the author may be, only what the argument is. Speaking for myself, I very rarely see actual arguments presented on this forum anymore. And when that does happen, it's generally due to a misunderstanding of the protocol by the author. I'm not saying that this article doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have merit because it was presented by a professor from Cornell.

revans

sr. member

Activity: 336

Merit: 250

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 06:01:16 PM

Quote from: ?? on ??

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:47:30 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 05:22:59 PM

I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.

You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that?

There was a Namecoin bug which allowed anyone to spend anyone else's namecoins. Basically, the code didn't check to see whether the signature was valid.

It was exploited, and the fix was to allow those transactions in the blockchain but ignore them, and then after a certain block number there is a hard fork.

So, something similar to that is possible, but it's also possible to effectively reverse.

It is not fair to accuse Bitcoin of being insecure because of faults found in alt-coins.

Is it fair for me to have to correct cretins all the time?

halfawake

hero member

Activity: 490

Merit: 500

Quote from: EntropyExtropy on November 26, 2013, 05:09:46 PM

The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.

It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.

Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin.

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 05:51:32 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:47:30 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 05:22:59 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:13:23 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 04:58:33 PM

Quote from: 600watt on November 26, 2013, 03:49:51 PM

bitcoin is software.

bugs can be fixed. i think we are beyond the point where even a major flaw would make it disappear. since there is so much money in the game, it will get handled ith care and common interest.

No, Bitcoin isn't software. Bitcoin is belief in the integrity of the block chain. Bitcoin survived a breach of that integrity early on in its development, but I doubt it would survive one now.

That wasn't much of a breach, it was more like a bug. There wasn't any way that anyone could still funds, fake a bitcoin balance, or some such. There was a bug that permitted a fairly effective DDOS attack on the network, thereby preventing transactions from processing. The integrity of the blockchain, nor it's security model, was ever in peril.

I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.

You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures

It's amongst this list

*edit* I realise you're a lazy douchebag so I'll actually paste the description here

"On August 15 2010, it was discovered that block 74638 contained a transaction that created over 184 billion bitcoins for two different addresses. This was possible because the code used for checking transactions before including them in a block didn't account for the case of outputs so large that they overflowed when summed. A new version was published within a few hours of the discovery. The block chain had to be forked. Although many unpatched nodes continued to build on the "bad" block chain, the "good" block chain overtook it at a block height of 74691. The bad transaction no longer exists for people using the longest chain."

and the other I mentioned

"On July 28 2010, two bugs were discovered and demonstrated on the test network. One exploited a bug in the transaction handling code and allowed an attacker to spend coins that they did not own. This was never exploited on the main network, and was fixed by Bitcoin version 0.3.5.
After these bugs were discovered, many currently-unused script words were disabled for safety."

If either of those happened again it could easily wipe Bitcoin out.

Well, I stand corrected. And yes, if either of those could ever happened again, it could wipe bitcoin out. I'll give you that. What are the odds that either of these expoits could be used agian, do you think?

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: ?? on ??

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:47:30 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 05:22:59 PM

I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.

You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that?

There was a Namecoin bug which allowed anyone to spend anyone else's namecoins. Basically, the code didn't check to see whether the signature was valid.

It was exploited, and the fix was to allow those transactions in the blockchain but ignore them, and then after a certain block number there is a hard fork.

So, something similar to that is possible, but it's also possible to effectively reverse.

It is not fair to accuse Bitcoin of being insecure because of faults found in alt-coins.

revans

sr. member

Activity: 336

Merit: 250

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:47:30 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 05:22:59 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:13:23 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 04:58:33 PM

Quote from: 600watt on November 26, 2013, 03:49:51 PM

bitcoin is software.

bugs can be fixed. i think we are beyond the point where even a major flaw would make it disappear. since there is so much money in the game, it will get handled ith care and common interest.

No, Bitcoin isn't software. Bitcoin is belief in the integrity of the block chain. Bitcoin survived a breach of that integrity early on in its development, but I doubt it would survive one now.

That wasn't much of a breach, it was more like a bug. There wasn't any way that anyone could still funds, fake a bitcoin balance, or some such. There was a bug that permitted a fairly effective DDOS attack on the network, thereby preventing transactions from processing. The integrity of the blockchain, nor it's security model, was ever in peril.

I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.

You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures

It's amongst this list

*edit* I realise you're a lazy douchebag so I'll actually paste the description here

"On August 15 2010, it was discovered that block 74638 contained a transaction that created over 184 billion bitcoins for two different addresses. This was possible because the code used for checking transactions before including them in a block didn't account for the case of outputs so large that they overflowed when summed. A new version was published within a few hours of the discovery. The block chain had to be forked. Although many unpatched nodes continued to build on the "bad" block chain, the "good" block chain overtook it at a block height of 74691. The bad transaction no longer exists for people using the longest chain."

and the other I mentioned

"On July 28 2010, two bugs were discovered and demonstrated on the test network. One exploited a bug in the transaction handling code and allowed an attacker to spend coins that they did not own. This was never exploited on the main network, and was fixed by Bitcoin version 0.3.5.
After these bugs were discovered, many currently-unused script words were disabled for safety."

If either of those happened again it could easily wipe Bitcoin out.

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 05:22:59 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:13:23 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 04:58:33 PM

Quote from: 600watt on November 26, 2013, 03:49:51 PM

bitcoin is software.

bugs can be fixed. i think we are beyond the point where even a major flaw would make it disappear. since there is so much money in the game, it will get handled ith care and common interest.

No, Bitcoin isn't software. Bitcoin is belief in the integrity of the block chain. Bitcoin survived a breach of that integrity early on in its development, but I doubt it would survive one now.

That wasn't much of a breach, it was more like a bug. There wasn't any way that anyone could still funds, fake a bitcoin balance, or some such. There was a bug that permitted a fairly effective DDOS attack on the network, thereby preventing transactions from processing. The integrity of the blockchain, nor it's security model, was ever in peril.

I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.

You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that?

revans

sr. member

Activity: 336

Merit: 250

Quote from: MoonShadow on November 26, 2013, 05:13:23 PM

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 04:58:33 PM

Quote from: 600watt on November 26, 2013, 03:49:51 PM

bitcoin is software.

bugs can be fixed. i think we are beyond the point where even a major flaw would make it disappear. since there is so much money in the game, it will get handled ith care and common interest.

No, Bitcoin isn't software. Bitcoin is belief in the integrity of the block chain. Bitcoin survived a breach of that integrity early on in its development, but I doubt it would survive one now.

That wasn't much of a breach, it was more like a bug. There wasn't any way that anyone could still funds, fake a bitcoin balance, or some such. There was a bug that permitted a fairly effective DDOS attack on the network, thereby preventing transactions from processing. The integrity of the blockchain, nor it's security model, was ever in peril.

I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: Lauda on November 26, 2013, 05:15:55 PM

Quote from: AnonyMint on November 26, 2013, 01:35:05 PM

Put you back on ignore.

Your button is also in color. Roll Eyes

What color is mine?

Lauda

legendary

Activity: 2674

Merit: 2965

Terminated.

Quote from: AnonyMint on November 26, 2013, 01:35:05 PM

Put you back on ignore.

Your button is also in color. Roll Eyes

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: EntropyExtropy on November 26, 2013, 05:09:46 PM

The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.

It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.

Mostly we just get tired of repeatedly refuting the same crap.

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: revans on November 26, 2013, 04:58:33 PM

Quote from: 600watt on November 26, 2013, 03:49:51 PM

bitcoin is software.

bugs can be fixed. i think we are beyond the point where even a major flaw would make it disappear. since there is so much money in the game, it will get handled ith care and common interest.

No, Bitcoin isn't software. Bitcoin is belief in the integrity of the block chain. Bitcoin survived a breach of that integrity early on in its development, but I doubt it would survive one now.

That wasn't much of a breach, it was more like a bug. There wasn't any way that anyone could still funds, fake a bitcoin balance, or some such. There was a bug that permitted a fairly effective DDOS attack on the network, thereby preventing transactions from processing. The integrity of the blockchain, nor it's security model, was ever in peril.

EntropyExtropy

newbie

Activity: 45

Merit: 0

The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.

It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.

revans

sr. member

Activity: 336

Merit: 250

Quote from: 600watt on November 26, 2013, 03:49:51 PM

bitcoin is software.

bugs can be fixed. i think we are beyond the point where even a major flaw would make it disappear. since there is so much money in the game, it will get handled ith care and common interest.

No, Bitcoin isn't software. Bitcoin is belief in the integrity of the block chain. Bitcoin survived a breach of that integrity early on in its development, but I doubt it would survive one now.

Topic: Bitcoin even more broken than previously thought - page 2. (Read 5069 times)