Topic: Bitcoin Security: What Has Changed From 2023 to 2024 (Read 248 times)

It's the flaws of people, not BTC's basically.
Thus, a person who goes into space should know what - can - happen to him.
And, to be fair - people do send money, including BTC, to hackers - it doesn't change the fact that the BTC is still secure in itself 

Dusting attacks have been and always will be a joke. The blockchain is public, you can always see where any coins go. Adding some free money to someones wallet does not matter. And if people care about not sending it someplace every decent BTC wallet has coin control.

As for 'pools tampering with transactions' show me an example. Oh, wait you can't since it didn't happen.

-Dave

As others have mentioned, everything you referred to pertains more to the tools people use to interact with Bitcoin rather than Bitcoin itself. That said, this doesn't mean Bitcoin, at its core, is not vulnerable to certain types of attacks. However, almost every possible attack on Bitcoin would cost more than one could potentially earn. People have attempted transaction spamming, brute-forcing certain keys, and spending non-spendable coins, but none have succeeded. To achieve any desired result, you would need substantial money and resources with little hope of success.

Overall, when comparing Bitcoin to other inventions, considering the limited resources Satoshi and the early developers had, I view it as one of the most successful inventions security-wise. Moreover, as the market grows, Bitcoin's strength will increase, which will enhance the security of tools related to it.

For now, please stop conflating user or code vulnerabilities with Bitcoin itself. I would argue that even in that aspect, Bitcoin is still far more secure than the traditional banking system, especially since a wide range of users are tech-savvy. Credit cards, which have been around since the 1950s, have had 74 years to evolve, yet people still expose their credit card information to hackers and scammers. Bitcoin has hardly been around for 15 years.

I think that Bitcoin is resilient and stable enough not to worry about bugs, and many risks of losing BTC can be avoided by following simple steps. If the Bitcoin community were small, the market capitalization was low, and the dev team was unreliable, that would be a different conversation, but none of that is the case. As for losing funds, exchanges and any other centralized platforms always carry the risk of a hack or exit scam, so one should take it into account when choosing how and where to store BTC. Non-custodial wallets are much safer in this sense, but it is important to ensure you don't lose your seed phrase and that nobody else gets access to it.

Not much has change except the fact the criminals are ramping up their activity because we are in the bull run. We almost have seen all kind of attacks from them, but perhaps they are becoming more sophisticated specially that we are in the period of AI, deep fakes are more prevalent that ever.

Of course, as we are what we call Be Your Own Bank, the first thing that we should learn is how to protect our accounts from this scammers and cyber threats. Maybe it's good if we will educate ourselves with what is the latest threat and then have our security practices updated as well.

You are mixing security and privacy. People wallets were hacked because they did not secure their wallets, devices properly and practically they were too careless so that they gave hackers opportunities to compromise their devices and wallets.

Your Privacy can be leaked, but your bitcoin will not be found or stolen.

You tried to mix many words but it does not help your post quality and coherence. Incorrect information is in your post too. Miners confirm transactions, Bitcoin nodes relay and validate new transactions and new blocks. Miners do not validate transactions, it's incorrect information.

https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/networking/node/

Bitcoin is such attractive giving hackers sleepless nights just to invade into users Privacies to steal their funds.
While Bitcoin core teams are tirelessly updating the security softwares in dismantling the malicious strategies of the hackers,  miners are also revalidating users transactions in confirming its Proof of Work  in the Bitcoin blockchain which also enables the distabilization dooming hackers to fail in cracking the decentralized security walls of the Blockchain.

So, intensively, threats would keep hitting up on the Bitcoin security terrains just to extract the treasures out of it but on revalidations and security reviews, it would keep being impossible for the to succeed so, the conciousness of users having their decentralized blockchains safe depends on individual users intercourse.

The only thing that relates to the bitcoin network is this discussion of the dox attack on the network were spammers send spam transactions just to congest the network, for whatever reason best known to them, and aside from that, the other point of hacking, spamming of wallet are all elementary security issues that is related to individual bitcoin users.

Trying not to mix up things, will help alot in making this discussion more understandable and clear, because there is not relationship between the two point you brought out here and for sure we have alot of development to expect in the bitcoin network that will put aside all the vonurability in the network, and that haven't happen in 2024 so nothing really is different between 2023-2024 unless something new come up along the way.

Nothing has evolved. The threats between 2023 and 2024 are the same threats that were already around a decade or so ago. Dust attacks and the threat of a 51% attack didn't just come out in 2024. They've been around for a long time.

When I first encountered Bitcoin almost a decade ago, dust attacks were already a thing. As a matter of fact, I guess it's much more aggressive back then. Today, I'm not getting free Sats anymore. Perhaps they've done their cost-benefit analysis already and realized that it's better to keep those precious Sats rather than give them away. Stack Sats is the motto these days.

51% attack is not a serious threat in 2024. It's more serious 10 years ago. Mining pool Ghash has actually reached 51% of the processing power back in 2014. No attack was made. And the 51% control only lasted for a few hours. Today, the largest mining pool, AntPool, is only in control of 20% of the network's hashrate. An attack is far from happening, and it's getting more expensive by the day. And, as always, it hasn't been worth it.

I guess the biggest threat in 2024 is on the individual level. It's the lack of awareness, indifference or the lack of initiative to boost one's security even if it's doable.

That has nothing to do with Bitcoin.
For example when a pickpocket in the NYC subway steals your wallet from your backpocket, you don't claim it is a security problem with the dollar!
It's the same here, if you used a centralized service like exchanges, a poorly developed software by incompetent developers like certain wallets, etc. the "security problem" is with those tools not with Bitcoin.

What bugs and in which "code"?

That is not a "security problem". That is a spam attack and it is not specific to 2024 or any specific year for that matter. They could happen from day one and there is no solution to that because you can't prevent people from sending coins to any destination without removing the censorship resistance principle of Bitcoin.

When did they do this?!

Security, scalability and decentralization are three components of The Blockchain Trilemma. They interact with each other and affect each other, so I disagree if you say security has no relation with Scalability or decentralization of a blockchain.

Privacy and other issues like wallet security are different things, and they don't belong to Blockchain Trilemma components. It can be from a blockchain design, private or public ledger, a wallet software design and user practice too.

I do not think there was too strong of an attack to threaten bitcoin’s decentralization or its blockchain in general. Most of the hacks and attacks I have seen are really directed towards individuals that hold bitcoin and not bitcoin blockchain in itself.

It’s probably even a lot easier to attack and hack government controlled assets rather than launch an attack on bitcoin.
If you get hacked or scammed, that is totally on you and not the bitcoin network. We have been established that the network is secure and its decentralized nature helps with that. As an individual, we are responsible for what we hold and how we make sure we don’t lose them.

You have mixed security problems with privacy and scalability problems, and bitcoin security at the blockchain level is completely different from the level of individuals and wallets, so in short, bitcoin has not suffered from clear security problems since its inception in 2009 and since 2013 the network has been running 24/7 without the need for a hardfork. If you use good wallets, open source, true airgapped system then it can be said that your coins are safe.

coindesk decrypt.co cointelegraph are bad sites to get tech updates, they are news services with duplicate or unverified news.

New investors in Bitcoin have to be aware of the challenges that Bitcoin security has faced before so that they do not fall victim in case of any repetition of such security challenges. Getting aware of the security history of bitcoin is equipping yourself with enough information to avoid any security pitfall that may present itself. If you happen to be an investor that quickly learns from the experience of others, then the information about previous security challenges that Bitcoin has faced would be very useful to you because it means that learning from those experiences will ensure that you never have to face those sorts of experiences again, keeping you on the positive side of cryptocurrency investment to benefit from it.

I like the fact that you are trying to point out all possible vulnerabilities that concerns everything that has to do with Bitcoin ranging from wallet hacking, 51% attack and others. But towards the conclusion of your post, you sounded as if 51% attack relates well with wallet hack. IMO, it doesn't work that way. Okay I agree, keeping your wallet secure or keys offline is very crucial, but, of what use will the wallet become when a 51% attack eventually happens (which won't)?. So, I think you should've probably address the whole issues line by line for easy grasping.

What vulnerabilities are you talking about?
Vulnerabilities on wallets and shit is not same as one in the Blockchain.
The above vulnerabilities are quite common and isn't something that explicitly bitcoin fault.
But the user or the wallets.
Bitcoin could get vulnerable if mining becomes centralized
Or the 51% attack.

Security issues are not just peculiar to the Bitcoin system. Other financial systems face similar challenges and they will always be there because hackers and others will always look for avenues to exploit the vulnerability of any process. The Bitcoin system is secured to a large extent but the security of your coins depends more on you. There is always a need to be abreast with new developments in the sector and ensure you apply the necessary security measures to avoid becoming a victim.

KYC and centralization is the biggest threat to Cryptocurrency, not these spoof attacks. I know end users are affected by this, but what percentage? And if you look at those who have to do KYC just to withdraw their funds, that percentage is way above. So if you want to solve something, solve it for the majority of the users. And I do not think anything changed between 2023-2024 except people being more aware of "Not your keys, not your coins".

What happened with wallets and exchanges have nothing to do with Bitcoin security. Because a wallet can be good or bad, open source or close source, custodial or self custodial, an exchange can be centralized or decentralized, but all of them has nothing to do with Bitcoin protocol. If they have security weakness and holes for hackers to compromise their wallets or exchanges, it's their issue, not Bitcoin protocol.

Cryptocurrency scam book.
Cryptocurrency security checklist.
Bitcoin security and resources.

Foundry and AntPool didn't wait until 2024 to own +- 50% of the network hashrate. Same with dusting attacks, there's nothing really new here.

In my opinion, the biggest current threats are the excesses of legal regulations, and the new KYC shotgun trend, which exploits the anti-Bitcoin idea that there's a difference between "clean" and "dirty" Bitcoin.