How someones made 184 Billion Bitcoin appear out of nowhere

hahahafr

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Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on November 06, 2019, 10:08:41 AM

Quote from: bitmover on November 06, 2019, 08:42:23 AM

Are there any reference of this event here in bitcointalk forum? Something written by Satoshi?

Yes.

The incident was initially spotted and flagged up by Jeff Garzik here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/strange-block-74638-822

The main thread in Development & Technical Discussion is here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/overflow-bug-serious-823

It actually seems like Gavin Andresen wrote a temporary fix first, before satoshi wrote a permanent fix about 20 minutes later.

satoshi then released this as version 0.3.10 a few hours later: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/version-0310-block-74638-overflow-patch-827

That's was a timely intervention on the part of these developers you know and i think the crypto industry is indebted to them for this quick solution that they had to fix in the shortest time possible. I really have a catching up to do to get to the crust of this matter. Though it's way into the past but every tiny bit of information in this industry is worth it!

pgbit

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Trident Protocol | Simple «buy-hold-earn» system!

I definitely didn't know about this even though I pride myself in learning all about Bitcoin from it's earliest developement stage, reading this felt like reading a thriller and my heart actually pounded when it came to the part about how Satoshi fixed the issue within just a few hours after it was reported and returned normalcy to the bitcoin network, always thought that Bitcoin cane out perfect from the beginning but I prefer the way it happened, it simply means that it was improved and is now as strong as it is ever going to be.

2double0

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Was the hacker able to use those fake generated coins in trading? Even 0.01% of that would have been enough to work as a bounty for hacker if he was able to get it. Sigh that there was a flaw but I'm sure we are not going to witness that ever again. If not completely destroyed, the hacker would have taken partial advantage of that hack?

And nice article you have brought to us.

JessicaVL

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Quote from: bitmover on November 06, 2019, 08:42:23 AM

I didn't know about this history.
Are there any reference of this event here in bitcointalk forum? Something written by Satoshi?

That hacker is not so evil. He exposed the bug in a time when things could be easily fixed. Thank God that happened long ago, and not recently.

Hahaha! That's an interesting take on it! It's certainly fortunate that it happened earlier rather than now. Can you imagine if the bug was only exposed now? Yikes.

hatshepsut93

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Quote from: JessicaVL on November 06, 2019, 07:30:56 AM

If Satoshi Nakamoto had been unable to rectify the hack, Bitcoin would almost certainly have died. Basically, there would have been no cryptocurrency industry to speak of. Bitcoin’s price would have dropped like a stone, and within 24 hours the entire system could have collapsed.

I don't agree with this conclusion, that bug was just a programming error, if Satoshi wouldn't fix it, someone else would fork Bitcoin and do it instead. Maybe Bitcoin would have had worse reputation if it took too long to fix that bug, but there's nothing fundamental about that bug that would kill the idea of cryptocurrency. We had some big disasters in altcoins, and they are still alive and well, like Ethereum and the DAO, for example.

qiman

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I never knew of this incident and things could have turned out really differently if the hacker had won the day. Good job Satoshi Nakamoto and the general consensus at the time took the Bitcoin core 3.01 as the dominant chain and saved the day, otherwise we would not have the flourishing market we know as the CMC today and so many people making and generating the wealth they have generated over the past ten years, thanks to the Bitcoin story that has evolved thus far.

bearexin

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Wow, I would have not have known this if not because you dug it up which I will make more of my finding too to verify this because all the years that I have been using bitcoin, I have never heard that it was once hacked, but it is a good thing that the bug was found before satoshi left the forum or left bitcoin, if the bug had been after satoshi disappeared, this would have been a very big disaster for bitcoin and would have tarnished its name in the heart off people.

This shows how very important satoshi is in the activities of bitcoin, and I don’t know why he disappeared. I believe that if he was still around, maybe all these hackers would have actually found it quite difficult to be doing all the things they are doing that is discouraging cryptocurrency users.

franky1

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Quote from: alyssa85 on November 07, 2019, 12:27:36 PM

The only way it would happen again is if they did a soft fork that had mistakes.

nope
people are to reliant on core. and even just last year there was a bug at software level that ignored doing a vital check at a certain time, this meant it could have been exploited to create more coins.

luckily it was not exploited. but the problem is if it was exploited everyone has become reliant on core to hand out a patch, which should they choose to or not becomes a question. not a certainty.

we are not in the 2010 scenario of everyone coding their own independant clients and if there is a bug patching it themselves. instead the community is reliant on core.
we are not as decentralised as we may think

alyssa85

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Quote from: Kprawn on November 06, 2019, 11:00:27 AM

I am genuinely interested on how this will be handled, if something like that happened now. Huh

There are a lot more transactions being done now and

I wonder if miners would all work together to "rewind" the Blockchain, if it happened again. I think it is in everyone's interest to do this again, because

losing a few coins with a "rewind" is better than losing the value of every other coin you own, if miners did not want to participate. Fortunately for us, a

lot more eyes are currently on the Open source code and also on what is happening on the Blockchain, so it will even be spotted a lot quicker now. Cool

The only way it would happen again is if they did a soft fork that had mistakes. Most forks carry some mistakes - the last steem fork had so many bugs they had to rapidly release fixes - luckily in the steem universe the top twenty witnesses decide what version to run, so it's easy to correct.

With bitcoin it would be much harder given that the miners are numerous and you'd have to persuade them one by one to run the corrected version - that's kind of why the devlopers are so resistent to "improvements" and are so conservative about soft forks. Forks carry loads of risks.

Wintersoldier

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I see, after this incident, Satoshi left and stay anonymous, does it somehow mean that the problem that a bitcoin technology will face in the latter future is 100 % zero? Meaning, that bitcoin will be invulnerable to attacks? If this is the case, we should really adore Satoshi's contribution to blockchain technology. if this scenario will still occur like:

Quote from: bitmover on November 06, 2019, 08:42:23 AM

That hacker is not so evil. He exposed the bug in a time when things could be easily fixed. Thank God that happened long ago, and not recently.

We're all stop with a big stung on ourselves looking at how our bitcoin will turn into losses. This reminds me that belief about "There's no safe system" is somehow true because before, I do really think that bitcoin is invulnerable even in beta.

oleg681010

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I didn't even think about it, thank you.

leea-1334

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Temporary forum vacation

Quote from: JessicaVL on November 06, 2019, 07:30:56 AM

Today we have a thriving cryptocurrency industry, with an overall market cap of around $226 billion USD (at the time of writing). Still, we have to ask ourselves exactly how someone made 184.4 billion Bitcoin appear out of nowhere. We need to remember that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology are not flawless designs - they’re designed by people, and people are inherently fallible. With that being said, the quick thinking and ingenuity of people is also what has saved this industry time and time again - here’s hoping to an equally (almost) as exciting future ahead.

I think it is important to recognize that Bitcoin is a new technology, yes 11 years is nowadays a long time for technology so today we see it at a stage that is very mature and very resilient to attacks, with so many developers maintaining it and so many users constantly testing it and so many miners securing it,,, but any new tech was going to have exploits and loopholes, which in Bitcoin's case was found very early on.

Like you said people are inherently fallible. This is why it is good not just one or a few people decide how things happen in the network.

Baofeng

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I opened a thread about that supposedly "bug" here, Did you know?.

maxreish

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Wow, such informative post. Never thought that the history of btc was something special. I really admire Satoshi for being so attentive and resolved the issue in a wise way. Also, I never heard about the two versions of btc before due to the hacked issues. It's amazing to ready some great contents like this. So, btc almost died but it recover and still surviving until this day.

thom88

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Quote from: bitmover on November 06, 2019, 08:42:23 AM

I didn't know about this history.
Are there any reference of this event here in bitcointalk forum? Something written by Satoshi?

That hacker is not so evil. He exposed the bug in a time when things could be easily fixed. Thank God that happened long ago, and not recently.

that is just what i thought. if that would happen now, that would be the END and with the pace the bitcoin community is going the fix would have taken a good amount of time

franky1

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Quote from: blckhawk on November 07, 2019, 03:15:33 AM

A great reminder of such happening. I actually have already read and known about this piece of history in Bitcoin and its quite fascinating how exploits are done on these complicated code with determination. I also admire and impressed that a decentralized network has proven that with its system, the power is upon the people and not some central organization, and the fate is totally dependent to the users of the platform, thus the soft fork won over the exploited version of the blockchain.

these days people are now reliant on core releasing an update
as said in previous post in 2010 a couple dozen people (who were predominently coders) could self patch thier own code. these days of a couple hundred thousand people that could be affected in a similar 19hour event. (who are not predominantly coders) have to rely on core to give them a patch

after all. imagine an bug was found now. it was exploited and although core devs taking hours to figure out the cause and make a patch. a exploiter already planned the evnt and had code that also does other nasty stuff, just announces he has a version that can patch the first bug (but trojans new bugs) .. people have to review his codebase. and learn to trust it. or wait and pray that core hurries up.

people have already prefered to wait for core and ignore any non core devs from offering an unreviewed client that is advertised as fixing bitcoin issues

bitcoin 2019 is not the same as bitcoin 2010. so dont think the events of 2010 prove what 2019 is in regards to decentralisation and community power

blckhawk

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A great reminder of such happening. I actually have already read and known about this piece of history in Bitcoin and its quite fascinating how exploits are done on these complicated code with determination. I also admire and impressed that a decentralized network has proven that with its system, the power is upon the people and not some central organization, and the fate is totally dependent to the users of the platform, thus the soft fork won over the exploited version of the blockchain.

franky1

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there was a similar bug recently done by bad code by matt corrallo and supposedly rviewed and allowed to enter bitcoin cores codebase by gmax. lucky the code was not exploited and a patch was released. but it still happens.

back in 2010 though (that bug was exploited) was much easier to get many participants to drop a 19hour old chain without much financial harm of doing so(as it becomes a double spend where the customer suddenly gets their money back) because not many services existed back then and not many transactions per block were being performed

19 hours is not just 114 blocks of 1 or 2 tx's each which are most likely to just be small 'tester' transactions.. but these days 19hours is 114 blocks of ~2000. these days its not just something that may affct a couple hundred pople/transactions users.. its something that can now affect a couple hundred thousand of users/transactions. these days its not 1cent at risk per btc, but $8k+ at risk per btc
so orphaning off a dud chain, causing a double spend event causes more consequences and can cause more companies to be less accepting/willing to just do it for the benefit of bitcoin longevity

JessicaVL

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Quote from: tsaroz on November 06, 2019, 10:54:25 AM

Good info. But it's a completely plagiarized text from the cryptoninja website. Not a single word or link added or deducted by the OP. OP's almost every post are just a copy paste from different websites.

Thanks for the message. We actually are an agency that create content for news outlets and we reshare the content for them. As you can see we included the cryptoninjas link at the bottom as reference to the original post.

I am not sure how this is at all an issue if we included a link back in the first place. We are also open to feedback if you would like us to edit the intro to let everyone know its a repost?

Pyrojason

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Fascinating. Although it is quite a meal of copy-pasta, it’s good information. I haven’t seen this before.
It’s good that it was patched so far back and that OG Master Sat was there to fix it so timely.
The code has come a long way.

Topic: How someones made 184 Billion Bitcoin appear out of nowhere (Read 844 times)