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posted by janrinok on Saturday August 13 2016, @02:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the theoretically,-of-course dept.

A curious proof-of-work project built on cryptocurrency has emerged that offers a means to prove participation in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

University of Colorado assistant professor Eric Wustrow and University of Michigan phD student Benjamin VanderSloot create the platform that allows TLS web servers to be targeted.

Signatures are created when TLS connections are confirmed, gifting attackers another means to be paid for denial of service attacks.

The DDoSCoins could be traded in for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, the pair say.

"DDoSCoin allows miners to prove that they have contributed to a distributed denial of service attack against specific target servers," the researchers write in the paper DDoSCoin: Cryptocurrency with a Malicious Proof-of-Work [PDF].

[...] It is an interesting concept for the well-oiled DDoS machine that has become so commoditised that the bloke-in-the-pub can order cheap and very large anonymous attacks to any target of their choosing.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday August 14 2016, @11:04PM

    by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Sunday August 14 2016, @11:04PM (#388006)

    I read it the other way:
    For about 5 years, we have been telling people to "Encrypt Everything." The idea is that if you encrypt everything, interesting data no longer stands out just because it is encrypted. The common refrain I hear from people pushing this is that modern CPUs can handle it.

    Suddenly, with this DDOSCoin, you have a system to make offering strong encryption expensive (even over tor): with built-in financial rewards. If people start submitting their "winnings" from normal browsing traffic, you now have known plain-text for doing cryptanalysis.

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