[Bitcoin-development] Some PR preparation
I'm sure it won't be long before Slashdot and a variety of sources start reporting on this event. Bitcoin has been in the media a lot lately, so this story is likely to get some attention. The blowback of this event is mostly psychological, so I think it would be exceptionally wise to start preparing PR comments that can be posted on articles immediately after they go public. This event is likely draw much more negative attention than it deserves, and getting some positiveinformed comments posted up front will potentially make a difference in the way the story is received. Undoubtedly, many articles (and especially commenters) will shape this into the end of Bitcoin. I would describe it as there was a short and mostly-harmless lapse in the ability of the network to reach a consensus, causing transactions to get delayed by a few hours. It *really* needs to be emphasized that coins are safe, and nothing anyone has/could do will change that. And that it would've been extremely difficult to exploit for gain. Transactions got delayed while a bug was fixed. End of story. Hell, someone here should submit their own slashdot article about it! 100% chance this hits slashdot -- it might as well be written by someone who understands it. Similarly, we could be sending sources information to pre-empt misinformation being spread about it. Unfortunately, I have to go to bed, so I can't really do much. I just wanted folks to be on the lookout and be ready to respond to the crazy stuff that's going to hit the media in the next 12 hours. -Alan -- Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 positioned as A LEADER in The Forrester Wave(TM): Endpoint Security, Q1 2013 and remains a good choice in the endpoint security space. For insight on selecting the right partner to tackle endpoint security challenges, access the full report. http://p.sf.net/sfu/symantec-dev2dev ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Some PR preparation
On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 7:03:54 AM Alan Reiner wrote: I'm sure it won't be long before Slashdot and a variety of sources start reporting on this event. Bitcoin has been in the media a lot lately, so this story is likely to get some attention. The blowback of this event is mostly psychological, so I think it would be exceptionally wise to start preparing PR comments that can be posted on articles immediately after they go public. This event is likely draw much more negative attention than it deserves, and getting some positiveinformed comments posted up front will potentially make a difference in the way the story is received. Undoubtedly, many articles (and especially commenters) will shape this into the end of Bitcoin. I would describe it as there was a short and mostly-harmless lapse in the ability of the network to reach a consensus, causing transactions to get delayed by a few hours. It *really* needs to be emphasized that coins are safe, and nothing anyone has/could do will change that. And that it would've been extremely difficult to exploit for gain. Transactions got delayed while a bug was fixed. End of story. I think we should be careful not to downplay the reality either. For a number of hours, transactions could have received up to N confirmations and then still been reversed. While we could contact the bigger payment processors, I saw people still trying to buy/sell on OTC, whom could have been scammed even by taking standard precautions. Luke -- Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 positioned as A LEADER in The Forrester Wave(TM): Endpoint Security, Q1 2013 and remains a good choice in the endpoint security space. For insight on selecting the right partner to tackle endpoint security challenges, access the full report. http://p.sf.net/sfu/symantec-dev2dev ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Some PR preparation
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 8:10 AM, Luke-Jr l...@dashjr.org wrote: I think we should be careful not to downplay the reality either. For a number of hours, transactions could have received up to N confirmations and then still been reversed. While we could contact the bigger payment processors, I saw people still trying to buy/sell on OTC, whom could have been scammed even by taking standard precautions. I don't want to misrepresent what happened, but how much of that was really a risk? The block was rejected, but the transactions were not. Any valid transactions to hit the network would get added to everyone's memory pool and mined in both chains. Thus all nodes would still reject double-spend attempts. As far as I understood it, you would've had to have majority mining power on one of the chains (and both had non-negligible computing power on them), so double-spending still required an exceptional amount of resources -- just not the normal 50% that is normally needed. Perhaps... 10%? But how many people can even have 10%? In addition to that, a victim needs to be found that hasn't seen the alert, is willing to execute a large transaction, and is on the wrong side of the chain. Is this incorrect? Yes, there was less resources needed to execute an attack -- but it still required a very powerful attacker, way outside the scope of regular users. -- Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 positioned as A LEADER in The Forrester Wave(TM): Endpoint Security, Q1 2013 and remains a good choice in the endpoint security space. For insight on selecting the right partner to tackle endpoint security challenges, access the full report. http://p.sf.net/sfu/symantec-dev2dev___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Some PR preparation
Can some enterprising soul determine if there were any double-spend attempts? I'm assuming no, and if that's the case, we should talk about that publicly. Either way, I think it's generally another test well done by everyone; people pitched in on PR, tech, communication, yay Bitcoin! On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Alan Reiner etothe...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 8:10 AM, Luke-Jr l...@dashjr.org wrote: I think we should be careful not to downplay the reality either. For a number of hours, transactions could have received up to N confirmations and then still been reversed. While we could contact the bigger payment processors, I saw people still trying to buy/sell on OTC, whom could have been scammed even by taking standard precautions. I don't want to misrepresent what happened, but how much of that was really a risk? The block was rejected, but the transactions were not. Any valid transactions to hit the network would get added to everyone's memory pool and mined in both chains. Thus all nodes would still reject double-spend attempts. As far as I understood it, you would've had to have majority mining power on one of the chains (and both had non-negligible computing power on them), so double-spending still required an exceptional amount of resources -- just not the normal 50% that is normally needed. Perhaps... 10%? But how many people can even have 10%? In addition to that, a victim needs to be found that hasn't seen the alert, is willing to execute a large transaction, and is on the wrong side of the chain. Is this incorrect? Yes, there was less resources needed to execute an attack -- but it still required a very powerful attacker, way outside the scope of regular users. -- Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 positioned as A LEADER in The Forrester Wave(TM): Endpoint Security, Q1 2013 and remains a good choice in the endpoint security space. For insight on selecting the right partner to tackle endpoint security challenges, access the full report. http://p.sf.net/sfu/symantec-dev2dev ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development -- -- [image: CoinLab Logo]PETER VESSENES CEO *pe...@coinlab.com * / 206.486.6856 / SKYPE: vessenes 811 FIRST AVENUE / SUITE 480 / SEATTLE, WA 98104 -- Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 positioned as A LEADER in The Forrester Wave(TM): Endpoint Security, Q1 2013 and remains a good choice in the endpoint security space. For insight on selecting the right partner to tackle endpoint security challenges, access the full report. http://p.sf.net/sfu/symantec-dev2dev___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Some PR preparation
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Alan Reiner etothe...@gmail.com wrote: I don't want to misrepresent what happened, but how much of that was really a risk? The block was rejected, but the transactions were not. Some but not much. If someone flooded a bunch of duplicate concurrently announcing both spends to as many nodes as they could reach they would almost certainly gotten some conflicts into both chains. Then both chains would have gotten 6 confirms. Then one chain would pop and anyone on the popped side would see 6 confirm transactions undo. This attack would not require any particular resources, and only enough technical sophistication to run something like pynode to give raw txn to nodes at random. The biggest barriers against it were people being uninterested in attacking (as usual for all things) and there not being many (any?) good targets who hadn't shut down their deposits. They would have to have accepted deposits with 12 confirms and let you withdraw. During the event an attacker could have gotten of their deposit-able funds. On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Peter Vessenes pe...@coinlab.com wrote: Can some enterprising soul determine if there were any double-spend attempts? I'm assuming no, and if that's the case, we should talk about that publicly. There were circulating double-spends during the fork (as were visible on blockchain.info). I don't know if any conflicts made it into the losing chain, however. It's not too hard to check to see what inputs were consumed in the losing fork and see if any have been consumed by different transactions now. I agree it would be good to confirm no one was ripped off, even though we can't say there weren't any attempts. -- Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 positioned as A LEADER in The Forrester Wave(TM): Endpoint Security, Q1 2013 and remains a good choice in the endpoint security space. For insight on selecting the right partner to tackle endpoint security challenges, access the full report. http://p.sf.net/sfu/symantec-dev2dev ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Some PR preparation
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 11:09 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Peter Vessenes pe...@coinlab.com wrote: Can some enterprising soul determine if there were any double-spend attempts? I'm assuming no, and if that's the case, we should talk about that publicly. [snip] I agree it would be good to confirm no one was ripped off, even though we can't say there weren't any attempts. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.msg1616747#msg1616747 -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Some PR preparation
Just a quick and dirty check if something bad actually happened. 430 transactions that were confirmed in the alt-chain, are not confirmed in the true blockchain. The good news is that as far as I can tell most of them are low volume transactions destined for SD. 7 transactions were true double spends, or to be more precise transactions in which an conflicting transaction was confirmed in the new chain (with their respective amount): 12814b8ad57ce5654ba69eb26a52ddae1bff42093ca20cef3ad96fe7fd85d195 261 BTC cb36ba33b3ecd4d3177d786209670c9e6cdf95eb62be54986f0b49ca292714af 0.06 BTC 7192807f952b252081d0db0aa7575c4695b945820adaf7776b7189e6b3d86f96 0.01 BTC 355d4ea51c3b780cf0b10e8099a06a31484e0060bc140b63f3d6e5fb713ace5e 0.05 BTC b961bc0c663a46893afd3166a604e7e2639533522d9fec61fdb95eb665e86f5a 0.61 BTC 138063e4bdb76feaa511f1e7f9c681eb468ef9140c141671741c965e503b84c6 1.62 BTC a10bd194cdbf9aa4c12eb0b120056998a081a9b0d93d70570edff24dec831f90 0.81 So the one transaction that really hurt was the one published on BitcoinTalk. We're not yet out of the woods as some of the 423 transactions still have a chance of being doublespent, but looks like it's not that bad after all. Cheers, Chris P.S.: For a complete list of transactions see http://pastebin.com/wctJU3Ln -- Christian Decker On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 7:39 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 11:09 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Peter Vessenes pe...@coinlab.com wrote: Can some enterprising soul determine if there were any double-spend attempts? I'm assuming no, and if that's the case, we should talk about that publicly. [snip] I agree it would be good to confirm no one was ripped off, even though we can't say there weren't any attempts. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.msg1616747#msg1616747 -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Some PR preparation
Thanks Chris. Yep, looks like an honest-ish user managed to accidentally get one tx into one chain and another into the other. I think I'd cautiously say that if OKPay gets their cash back, or freezes his balance nobody is out BTC for last night, (instead just time and effort). I'm doing a little FUD-fighting right now, but will try and pick up a bit more if necessary tonight after my flight lands. I think this is mostly over the heads of a lot of our typical media contacts, though. Peter On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Christian Decker decker.christ...@gmail.com wrote: Just a quick and dirty check if something bad actually happened. 430 transactions that were confirmed in the alt-chain, are not confirmed in the true blockchain. The good news is that as far as I can tell most of them are low volume transactions destined for SD. 7 transactions were true double spends, or to be more precise transactions in which an conflicting transaction was confirmed in the new chain (with their respective amount): 12814b8ad57ce5654ba69eb26a52ddae1bff42093ca20cef3ad96fe7fd85d195 261 BTC cb36ba33b3ecd4d3177d786209670c9e6cdf95eb62be54986f0b49ca292714af 0.06 BTC 7192807f952b252081d0db0aa7575c4695b945820adaf7776b7189e6b3d86f96 0.01 BTC 355d4ea51c3b780cf0b10e8099a06a31484e0060bc140b63f3d6e5fb713ace5e 0.05 BTC b961bc0c663a46893afd3166a604e7e2639533522d9fec61fdb95eb665e86f5a 0.61 BTC 138063e4bdb76feaa511f1e7f9c681eb468ef9140c141671741c965e503b84c6 1.62 BTC a10bd194cdbf9aa4c12eb0b120056998a081a9b0d93d70570edff24dec831f90 0.81 So the one transaction that really hurt was the one published on BitcoinTalk. We're not yet out of the woods as some of the 423 transactions still have a chance of being doublespent, but looks like it's not that bad after all. Cheers, Chris P.S.: For a complete list of transactions see http://pastebin.com/wctJU3Ln -- Christian Decker On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 7:39 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 11:09 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Peter Vessenes pe...@coinlab.com wrote: Can some enterprising soul determine if there were any double-spend attempts? I'm assuming no, and if that's the case, we should talk about that publicly. [snip] I agree it would be good to confirm no one was ripped off, even though we can't say there weren't any attempts. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.msg1616747#msg1616747 -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development -- -- [image: CoinLab Logo]PETER VESSENES CEO *pe...@coinlab.com * / 206.486.6856 / SKYPE: vessenes 811 FIRST AVENUE / SUITE 480 / SEATTLE, WA 98104 -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
