Topic: IF the NSA wanted to take control over Bitcoin, how would they do it? - page 3. (Read 5987 times)

NSA or any other agency won't gain anything by destroying Bitcoin because it's not a threat to the national security of any country right now and I don't think it will be any time soon. Plus Bitcoin is open-source right? So any tampering with the source code or placing backdoors would be easily noticed wouldn't it?

The agencies would have an interest to make bitcoin big. They can use it for their own operations if needed and they can follow the trail of the money. Since everyone know that, for example the nsa, controls the internet traffic of whole countries. So it would be not really hard to fight terrorism and similar things like that.

Well, pushing in bad code that is not found might be another nice gimmick but so far I think it was not successfull. Too many observe things closely.

+1 because thanks to Gavn, we have a scenario, where exacty this reverse exploit could be implemented. Please core devs: Don't let it happen!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2014/02/04/challenge-vulnerable-code.aspx
http://www.underhanded-c.org/_p_26.html

This challenge appeared on an internal alias dedicated to C++. It was issued by Mike Vine, a developer here at Microsoft who agreed to let us share it with the mighty Visual C++ blog readers:

This challenge came from me thinking about a simple bug which could be turned into a security vulnerability, so I thought I’d give it a go and try to code a plausibly deniable piece of code which looks innocent but is actually dangerous. I managed to actually go further than that, and produced something, that whilst unlikely, could possibly have come from non-malicious but sloppy coding.

So your challenge is – if you choose to accept it – analyze the sample code file “main.c” (attached) and try to find the (fairly obvious) security faux pas and ‘accidental’ bug which causes the security faux pas to be exploitable.

The 7th Underhanded C Contest is now open.

The goal of the contest is to write code that is as readable, clear, innocent and straightforward as possible, and yet it must fail to perform at its apparent function. To be more specific, it should do something subtly evil. Every year, we will propose a challenge to coders to solve a simple data processing problem, but with covert malicious behavior. Examples include miscounting votes, shaving money from financial transactions, or leaking information to an eavesdropper. The main goal, however, is to write source code that easily passes visual inspection by other programmers.

Well, in their view it is not a big enough threat to attack and spend millions on gaining a majority of the hashing power.  Once it is determined to be a threat it will be too large for them to buy their way in to control.  Plus the second they gain control is when all of the money floods out of Bitcoin and in to a different crypto.  That is the beauty of it, we are not forced in to using the currency so attacking it results in wasted money as the users move out of Bitcoin and in to a different crypto-currency.

NSA or any other agency won't gain anything by destroying Bitcoin because it's not a threat to the national security of any country right now and I don't think it will be any time soon. Plus Bitcoin is open-source right? So any tampering with the source code or placing backdoors would be easily noticed wouldn't it?

Plus the second they gain control is when all of the money floods out of Bitcoin and in to a different crypto.

Well, in their view it is not a big enough threat to attack and spend millions on gaining a majority of the hashing power.  Once it is determined to be a threat it will be too large for them to buy their way in to control.  Plus the second they gain control is when all of the money floods out of Bitcoin and in to a different crypto.  That is the beauty of it, we are not forced in to using the currency so attacking it results in wasted money as the users move out of Bitcoin and in to a different crypto-currency.

I'm not sure. The dev team was quite hidden for a long time. No real contact with the community. In my eyes that only changed after they wanted to bring out segwit and ln and found that they face a real big opposition. Then they started to argument and speak with the community alot more.

Though if you think about it... it does not need to be the NSA to harm the protocol, it can be the real world job of the developers or something similar that would not be allowed if they were politicians. It's not hard to find things that can be questioned.

I agree. Still I would like to know, if core team has already discussed this infiltration topic. If not ... then why not?

No, that was what we believed at the start. But it proved to be a valid attack vector to attack bitcoin through it's client. Regardless of what the protocol will look like that will change the ways bitcoin goes. You could attack bitcoin through core devs or through alternative forking clients. It's best to do it both.

Yes, bitcoiners could chose, but be honest... most bitcoiners will use what is presented. Only a core of them will chose with some checking before.

They will need more hash power than the whole world mining today to do a 51% attack, which is probably nit gonna happen. There is no other way to block bitcoins.

Did she pick Somalia, land of the free? Or still thinking?


Err, "Final 4th Grade Presentation on Civil forfeiture.mp4"? Look, I'm again civil forfeiture, it's a scary and often misused thing, but I also know forth graders. If Daddy got jailed for stealing from the collection plate, Jesus would be a berry berry bad man.
BTW, consider not begging for donations, that's a bit off-putting.

This year my daughter's class has an assignment "decide where to reside" where the students were asked to research other places (states or countries) they might want to move to and then make a presentation on the place on why they picked the place, etc.  She is taking this assignment very seriously.

Previously they had an assignment to discuss an important issue and present it to the the class.  Most of the other students picked things like "animal cruelty".  My daughters presentation was more interesting and you can find a link to it (the first link in the first paragraph) on this page:

 http://www.jmwagner.com/about.html

Most arguments are about "why should they invent an open source project, that could interrupt the banking system?"

Burt, have you thought of moving to Somalia? No intrusive regulations, no civil forfeitures, guns are legal, everyone loves bitcoins and plenty of pirate treasure coves.
Your family would dig it.

They actually did that to you? It's pretty harsh.

If they let you go, why did they charge you? Ive never heard of anything of the sort. Did you do anything or trade with anyone sketchy?

Dear BurtW,

We here at Homeland Security and the Justice department noticed that you have started to trade Bitcoins on the web site localbitcoins.com.  Contrary to rulings by the IRS we believe that Bitcoins are money.  Contrary to all standard definitions of the word "transmittal" we believe that by trading Bitcoins what you are doing could be transmitting money.  And finally FinCEN has stated that whether what you are doing is a business or not is a matter of fact and circumstance and we believe what you are doing may constitute a business.  Since there is no legal guidelines it would be totally up to a jury to decide if it is a business or not but we believe in our hearts and really feel that it might just possibly be a business. 

Please note that if a jury could be persuaded to rule in our favor on all three of these points then you would be facing 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.  So, we suggest you consult your attorney and see if you need to get a free license from FinCEN in order to trade Bitcoins on localbitcoins.com

Also, we would like to discuss with you a very small number of totally unrelated cases where we caught some kids buying drugs with Bitcoins that they just happened to buy from you.  This really has nothing to do with you but you might be able to help us in building our case against them.  Of course this would be at your discretion an convenience.  This is not some third world dictatorship under martial law where we would just arrest you, throw you in solitary confinement and try to strong arm you into helping us and steal your assets to directly fund our departments and operations.

Have a great day and thank you,

Michele Korver, AUSA

Aaron McWirter, special agent, Homeland Security Investigations