Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.games.development.design > #102

Re: Transferring ownership of digital information (in a p2p system) ?

Cross-posted to 5 groups.

Show all headers | View raw

New posting about new potentially weaknesses, confusion and doubts about 
bitcoins.

These are interesting questions, and possibilities for attack, which I also 
asked on bitcoin forum.

But in case it goes down it would be nice if it remains on usenet/in my 
outlook express folder as well, it's also on my harddrive somewhere.

I am trying to find answers to my own questions, hopefully the forum will 
help answering some of them.

Here is one posting of mine on the bit coin forum:

1. Why bitcoin could be a pyramid system:

Let's see if I understand correctly, and then examine a possible way of 
totally replacing the blockchain.

Conceptually speaking, all bit coins in existence form a chain of coins. 
These coins can be moved around from person to person, account to account, 
can be transerred, sold, bought etc.

Everytime coins are exchanged the chain starts to grow with new coins.

A possible problem with this concept is the chain grows too large.

So the idea is to cut away the tail of the chain to make it shorter again.

The idea behind cutting away the tail is to replace the tail with a single 
hash. (Merkle Tree Partially collapsed ? or perhaps something else, simply a 
single hash unrelated to merkle, or perhaps a new merkle hash root node, 
since something has to be the previous hash for the last block in the tail 
?).

Anyway the question is now:

What happens about all the transaction data  ?

You seem to imply as well, that this transaction data would have to been 
thrown away as well, since that would otherwise also grow to large, and 
since the blocks have been thrown away it makes no sense to store the 
transactions.

So the bottom line is:

1. Blocks are thrown away.
2. Transactions are thrown away.
3. What remains is a single hash.

My claim/idea was that an attacker could create "fake" transactions which 
represent the transactions which were thrown away in step 2.

You claim that doing so would be useless, because the entire network/system 
has apperently agreed to cut away the tail.

So everybody using bitcoin throws away the tail, the blocks, the 
transactions that went with it, and everybody agrees that that data is now 
no longer in play.

So you say making those fake transactions won't be usefull because they 
would be rejected by the system

You seem to say that these transactions cannot be re-injected into the 
system ?!?

But then my question is:

How does the remaining part of the system, the section beyond the tail, the 
section that was not cut off know who owns what ?

All those transactions which were done before the tail was cut off, result 
into some kind of wealth, some kind of account money ?!?

I assume that when a bitcoin application starts up, it starts to scan all 
transactions for it's own addresses, sums them together and thus figures out 
what it's balance is ?!?

If those transactions have been thrown away, and/or the blocks are not 
available for verification purposes ?!?!? Then how would the client know 
what it's balance is ?!?!?

Is this perhaps why bitcoin could be considered a pyramid scheme ?!?!? Once 
the cut happens wealth disappears ?!?!?

2. Plus another potential attack vector: "worm changes enough systems":

Addition to my previous posting: By the way this means there is another 
potentially way/attack to bitcoin:

A trojan/virus/malware/worm could start to alter the data which is on 
everybodies drive and starts to create it's own fake chain as an attempt to 
chain the thruth.

If the trojan/virus/malware/worm manages to infect enough system for example 
the 51% then history could be altered ?!?

Bye,
  Skybuck.

Back to comp.games.development.design | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Re: Transferring ownership of digital information (in a p2p system) ? "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7IsOK@DreamPC2006.com> - 2011-10-30 11:39 +0100
  Re: Transferring ownership of digital information (in a p2p system) ? "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7IsOK@DreamPC2006.com> - 2011-11-13 17:17 +0100
    Re: Transferring ownership of digital information (in a p2p system) ? "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7IsOK@DreamPC2006.com> - 2011-11-22 04:03 +0100
      Re: Transferring ownership of digital information (in a p2p system) ? "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7IsOK@DreamPC2006.com> - 2011-11-22 04:18 +0100
        Re: Transferring ownership of digital information (in a p2p system) ? "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7IsOK@DreamPC2006.com> - 2011-11-22 14:42 +0100
          Re: Transferring ownership of digital information (in a p2p system) ? "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7IsOK@DreamPC2006.com> - 2011-11-23 14:06 +0100
            Re: Transferring ownership of digital information (in a p2p system) ? "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7IsOK@DreamPC2006.com> - 2011-11-23 14:26 +0100
              Re: Transferring ownership of digital information (in a p2p system) ? "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7IsOK@DreamPC2006.com> - 2011-11-28 03:25 +0100

csiph-web