https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/blockchaininfo-misreports-origins-wasswiss-university-jumps-into-mining-game-113654
A test of the 51% attack post GPU age?
No.A test of the 51% attack post GPU age?
Please go read their paper. What they are doing is more than just proving an attack vector. It is to prove a possible shortcoming for the security of fast transaction processing and to offer a possible solution for any issues they can prove with it.
They mis-speak imho when they state they are to prove 'it can be done cheaply', as it would undoubtly cost several millions of dollars for the ~10% of network total hashing power they are utilizing to prove their attack vector. This would be a greatly pohibitive cost for an entity looking to take advantage of a transaction that would likely be for less than $20 in the situations they are seeking to show would rely on fast transactions. None the less, their approach is thorough and their solutions are likely to be quite beneficial to future businesses and transactions carried out in BTC. I'm thinking more along the lines of banks or other entities who have a need to process large volumes of small transactions and to do so quickly.
cheers
Actually, the setup they propose to perform the double spending attack during 0-confirmation payment is very cheap. You only need a number of machines running standard Bitcoin clients and one attack machine with modified Bitcoin client.
Reading their paper, it seems that their goal is to send coins to one address, but after that confirm a spending of the same coins to their own address by their miners.
One should note that the "Fast Double Spend" paper has already been submitted to,
accepted by, and is due to be presented on the ACM CCS 2012 conference in about two weeks.
So: Whatever they are doing now, it is not related to that specific paper.