SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the double-double-toil-and-trouble-fire-burn-and-caldron-bubble dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Cryptocurrency trading portal Coinbase delisted today the Ethereum Classic (ETC) currency after detecting a series of double-spend attacks over the last three days.
In layman terms, double-spend attacks are when a malicious actor gains the majority computational power inside a blockchain, which they then use to enforce unauthorized transactions over legitimate ones.
According to a security alert published today by Coinbase security engineer Mark Nesbitt, this is exactly what's been happening on the Ethereum Classic blockchain for the past three days, since January 5.
[...] The ETC cryptocurrency was created in August 2016, shortly after the infamous DAO hack, and was one of the first forks of the more established Ether (ETH).
[...] Update, January 8, 06:00 AM ET: Bitfly, a fellow cryptocurrency trading platform, has also confirmed Coinbase's report. So did the Ethereum Classic team, which was immediately criticized for not spotting the attack on its own network in the first place. Coinbase, too, was criticized, but for failing to reveal the double-spend attacks on Saturday when they first happened, leaving ETC users at risk for three days, for no good reason. Coinbase also updated its original report with details on another 12 double-spend attacks, bringing the total of stolen funds to 219,500 ETC (~$1.1 million).
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:27PM
They still need to get the gear. It costs money to destroy money. Every budget has limits and the benefits to destroying cryptocurrencies are greatly overstated.
And there are ways to make the needed threshold of compromise much higher than 50%.