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Early last month, the security team at Coinbase noticed something strange going on in Ethereum Classic, one of the cryptocurrencies people can buy and sell using Coinbase's popular exchange platform. Its blockchain, the history of all its transactions, was under attack.
An attacker had somehow gained control of more than half of the network's computing power and was using it to rewrite the transaction history. That made it possible to spend the same cryptocurrency more than once—known as "double spends." The attacker was spotted pulling this off to the tune of $1.1 million. Coinbase claims that no currency was actually stolen from any of its accounts. But a second popular exchange, Gate.io, has admitted it wasn't so lucky, losing around $200,000 to the attacker (who, strangely, returned half of it days later).
Just a year ago, this nightmare scenario was mostly theoretical. But the so-called 51% attack against Ethereum Classic was just the latest in a series of recent attacks on blockchains that have heightened the stakes for the nascent industry.
In total, hackers have stolen nearly $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency since the beginning of 2017, mostly from exchanges, and that's just what has been revealed publicly. These are not just opportunistic lone attackers, either. Sophisticated cybercrime organizations are now doing it too: analytics firm Chainalysis recently said that just two groups, both of which are apparently still active, may have stolen a combined $1 billion from exchanges.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday February 21 2019, @03:05AM (2 children)
So what? The article headline is NOT dishonest, as it doesn't mention either one. It merely says there are vulnerabilities in blockchain technology, which there are. From TFA:
Note that Ethereum Classic, despite your attempt to poo-poo this, is a top-20 currency with a market cap still in excess of $500 million. As TFA notes (and as quoted), there are well over a thousand currencies out there, and such an attack on most of them would be a lot easier. So, I don't think it's a disingenuous headline at all to note that this sort of vulnerability exists and it has now been used to target a currency in the top 1-2% of all cryptocurrencies.
So, when you say:
Nope. I think the moral of the story is cryptocurrencies are more vulnerable to lots of attack vectors that any of the pro-crypto folks like to admit. The 51% attack is only one of many vectors mentioned in TFA. Obviously most of the attacks are on exchanges, but TFA also notes cryptographic flaws in some complex protocols, bugs in major software clients handling cryptocurrencies, etc. The more valuable a currency gets, the more advantage there is for bad actors to try to exploit flaws in various parts of the process...
(Score: 1) by liberza on Thursday February 21 2019, @06:24PM
By saying it's a "Top 20 currency" you and the author are implying that it's widely used. It isn't. The vast majority of market cap is concentrated in the top 3 cryptocurrencies, BTC ETH and XRP, about $100 billion between the three. By comparison, ETC is not even $0.5 billion.
To say it is in the top 1-2% of cryptocurrencies is like saying LHS 288 is in the top 1-2% of stars that are close to us. Sure... but the sun is quite a bit more important...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:09PM
no, everyone with half a brain knows about the risks and takes them into account. it's only bankster and taxman whores who try to act like these possible attack vectors are news.