Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 14:31:39 -0500
From: Troy Benjegerdes <hozer@hozed.org>
To: Luke Dashjr <luke@dashjr.org>
Message-ID: <20140809193139.GH22640@nl.grid.coop>
References: <CAPS+U9-ze_-gcYh1WNVJ5h8AZ8owoQX=8OUgNcKnaxgvjxZATA@mail.gmail.com>
	<201408072345.45363.luke@dashjr.org>
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In-Reply-To: <201408072345.45363.luke@dashjr.org>
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Cc: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Miners MiTM
Precedence: list

On Thu, Aug 07, 2014 at 11:45:44PM +0000, Luke Dashjr wrote:
> On Thursday, August 07, 2014 11:02:21 PM Pedro Worcel wrote:
> > Hi there,
> > 
> > I was wondering if you guys have come across this article:
> > 
> > http://www.wired.com/2014/08/isp-bitcoin-theft/
> > 
> > The TL;DR is that somebody is abusing the BGP protocol to be in a position
> > where they can intercept the miner traffic. The concerning point is that
> > they seem to be having some degree of success in their endeavour and
> > earning profits from it.
> > 
> > I do not understand the impact of this (I don't know much about BGP, the
> > mining protocol nor anything else, really), but I thought it might be worth
> > putting it up here.
> 
> This is old news; both BFGMiner and Eloipool were hardened against it a long 
> time ago (although no Bitcoin pools have deployed it so far). I'm not aware of 
> any actual case of it being used against Bitcoin, though - the target has 
> always been scamcoins.

That statement right there is all the evidence I need to convince myself that
Bitcoin is under continuous and active BGP feed manipulation by organized
crime elements.

Just the phrase of referring to !bitcoin as 'scamcoins' is a signal of an
organized marketing/psychological operations effort to marginalize other 
competitors, and the documented altcoin BGP highjacks were most likely 
testing of the system to confirm both
a) that it works
b) how to hide it below the detection threshhold