Topic: Pool Manager Fraud? (Read 3463 times)

Not really pool manager fraud - it was done by the owner of the account on the pool that people weren't mining to but got redirected to.
That was a stratum redirect attack that I soon afterwards disabled in cgminer.
https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/commit/040b42c5c6596046a3621a73616f2babe4ae0bd2
Of course many miners were still running forks of cgminer and didn't update so were susceptible to this problem for a long time after that.

Here's an interesting paper that documents Wafflepool's fraud:
http://www.secureworks.com/cyber-threat-intelligence/threats/bgp-hijacking-for-cryptocurrency-profit/

In my days of mining when like 2013, and BFL was still the hype.

I actually mined a good month with my BFL 5ghs using bitminter, and actually saw no problems at all and havent been cheated.  Saw a solid .1 btc produced so I expect the same now if I decided to use their pool today with same results.

Bitminter is also more user-friendly in my observation if you are not super technical. Also allows to use on MAC`s if you have one, which most havent done.

Yes, that's what I meant when I said it's 100% up to these pools' managers as to whether you're included in the payout queue.indeed
thanks for the clarifications, guys

He's stating that unless you're examining the data being sent to your miner how would you know?  You still have to create transactions to distribute the block reward and that data is part of what your miner is trying to find the hash.  So unless you're looking at exactly what data your miner is hashing you wouldn't know.  Of course even if you did you'd still have to determine the fraudulent distribution.

As you can see miners place a bit of faith in the pool operators

Because that's the only way you'd be able to confirm that it's actually part of the mined block before it's mined.

There is also nothing that stops them putting less than you deserve into the blocks you are mining while you are mining them. You'd have to audit the pool hashrate somehow accurately and track each and every payout no differently to any other payout scheme.

I don't understand what or why you're asking this.

I think I have answered my own question:
These pool managers could simply refuse to include you in the payout queue. P2Pool is immune to that sort of fraud, certainly.

Do you deconstruct the data sent to your mining hardware to know what you're mining?

Is there a way to easily update `cgminer` on AntMiners?

But isn't that part of the mined block? They can't fudge around with that once it's mined…

I'm with Slush.  Happy with it but the conspiracy part of my brain will never truly trust anyone.

By not including your quota in the generation..

How could the manager of a non-P2Pool that pays its miners via the generation transaction claim some or all of a freshly-minted coin?

Not in the slightest, no.

Are pools in which the miners are paid via the generation transaction (e.g., Eligius, puddinpop) immune to fraud?

How is "pool manager fraud" even possible?

It's not enough to be good at programming, you have to know how the domain (bitcoin mining) works as well. There are plenty of horrible mining client implementations. Things like using a 32-bit integer to hold the difficulty, resulting in accidental block withholding attacks. Or making the user select the difficulty to mine at (and throwing away most of your work) instead of implementing the stratum protocol correctly and listening to the server when it tells you the difficulty. Or taking forever (and producing huge amounts of stale work) when the server tells you to immediately flush old work data and start on new data. Or throwing away stale work instead of passing it to the server.

When a developer who is new to bitcoin touches mining code I am frequently surprised at how bad the results are. It's as if there is no testing or quality control.


One would hope so. But the reality is much worse.

As one of the biggest pools used their hashpower to scam and steal from a dice game, very few of their miners left them.

As the biggest pool grew too big (centralizing too much hashpower) and refused to do anything about it, very few of their miners moved their hashpower.

When new pools offer 10% or even 40% extra mining income, or investment opportunities offer 7% gains per week, people queue to sign up. If you ask for transparency they get mad at you because they think you are trying to ruin the good deal for them.

Please. I am quickly turning into a bitter old man. Those of you who are still asking questions and demanding transparency and responsible behavior - you are my last hope. 

Do you or anyone know the "core devs" at BITMAIN? The people who handle the pool code and firmware? It would be interesting to hear their opinions on their implementation(s) and understand how many of them there are. I would assume BITMAIN have deep pockets and from there assume they would have cutting edge developers working on pool software full time. Especially since they mine with our products for a long time prior to shipping. Hell even when you receive a miner from their repair shop they have set it back to mine at their pools.

I would always stay away from a mining company's pool. Unless they hired CK and Kano, then I might follow them for the simple transparency they seem to bring to the table. I know transparency is a buzz word in our community, but I like the fact they explain things on a different level and pay attention to the community. If I screwup they tell me, and if I do well they tell me, but mainly it is the fact they communicate well, so the "telling me" part I like. Sorry Kano and CK if I bug you too much

That is expected of a pool operator though isn't it? "Transparency" in the forms of operations and communication. 

I think btcguild is ran by a good pool operator, but the Namecoin I made is still sitting in my offline storage because it was so insignificant.
Can you actually still register a name and use it with NMC? Do most just dump it?

Ofcourse I since moved most hash to kano.is and call it 'luck', but my payouts are much higher. I was with the guild for a couple of months, and now Kano for a couple. So not a long term comparison, but I'll say it is a great data point for me.

One thing I never understood is what the groups are accomplishing at the Guild. Or "teams", I should say. Although I joined one to look at stats. 

I don't If you want to pay a fee than use btcguild and earn namecoin in the process as well.
Plus they have more hashrate. Slush needs to either start the merge mining back up or drop his fee.
Personally I think 2% is greedy. especially if they also take the transaction fee.