How do spam attacks work? I'm assuming that a spam attack is a bunch of dust transactions with little or no fee, otherwise trying to contest the network with volume would be prohibitevly expensive. If that is the case, why do spam attacks work, because wouldn't the miners not select any of those transactions from the mr pool because they have a very low or absent transaction fee? (Or have I erred in my assumptions?)
And second, what is the goal of a spam attack? What is gained by the attacker?
step 1: have lots of money (bitcoin) to spend.
step 2: have a filthy agenda against bitcoin
step 3: send lots of transactions
it is not necessarily dust transactions, low fee, small,.... it started out (the first spam attack i saw) with 0.0001
BTC with 0.0001
BTC fee and since that is too obvious to find now it is random amounts with low to high fees.
here is one of them you can see:
https://blockchain.info/address/1GDhoFrzbQ6Yp9LitKEH8xnWhUjhmaQRfte.g. 77cb8ee8d319188dc42a634e171760e7881337513f82f0aec6127768d7467abd + 9e29fbe576b7f9da279c8fe6316cff6e09f0fbd3a70a99decbac978b96e91ea4 and lots of other transactions sending random amounts all with 40 inputs to make the transaction big and one output to the same destination! with seconds apart.
you can see some more here (i'll update it whenever i find a new and interesting one)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/mother-of-all-spam-attacks-on-bitcoin-network-proof-1776143If I made add, they can also creates a loop by sending low to high fees back to itself,
overloading the bitcoin network.
Nice catch there pooya87. I'm also amaze how someone will try or attempt to
disrupt the network by doing spam attack. I don't know what benefits someone
doing this to blockchain. However, I think if we have identified a rouge wallet
doing this, can we just block his bitcoin wallet to stop his malicious intent to
clogged the bitcoin network which make legitimate transaction wait for hours
or even days just to process the transaction?
