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A painful attack on the Bitcoin testnet recently caused a surge in network activity, resulting in the generation of over 165,000 blocks, three years' worth of blocks in just one week.
The attacker, Jameson Lopp, co-founder and chief security officer of Casa, publicly took credit for the incident, in the face of backlash from other Bitcoin developers.
Lopp defends attack as 'trivial feat'
Speaking on decentralized social media platform Nostr, Lopp described the attack as a “trivial exploit” requiring just 20 lines of code. When asked if the painful attack justified its consequences, Lopp said it only cost him a dollar in electricity.
Lopp defended his actions, argue that his intention was not malicious but rather intended to draw attention to an issue he had previously raised. He highlighted that conventional methods, such as communication via development mailing lists, had failed to adequately address the identified weakness.
“People are free to call me 'the bad guy,' but I'm simply the first to address this weakness. » I'm championing a cause, and sometimes it takes more than sending an email to get people's attention. ,” he added.
The attack involved flooding the testnet with excessive transactions, spamming the network, and significantly increasing the workload. As a result, the network difficulty increased, leading to the generation of over 165,000 blocks.
According to mempool.space datathere was a significant increase in hash rate and difficulty, peaking at 2,315 TH/s on April 19, before returning to normal levels of around 86 TH/s on April 30 following the attack.
Backlashes and opinions
Lopp described the painful incident online as a “gratuitous stress test,” sparking further backlash from the crypto community. He recommended for a reset of the Bitcoin testnet to address the “timewarp” vulnerability and restore mining rewards, which are currently negligible.
I'll post a test next weekend with all the details, but that shouldn't surprise anyone who read my email to the dev mailing list several weeks ago.
I suggest you view recent events as a free stress test. Looks like you have room for improvement.
–Jameson Lopp (@lopp) April 29, 2024
However, some, like Pouliot, compared Lopp's actions to vandalism, likening it to defecating in a communal jacuzzi to provoke a move.
We are all sitting in a jacuzzi at the spa and having a great time. One of us suggests moving to another spa, the jacuzzi there is better: it has a powerful filter that can keep it clean in case someone decides to shit in the jacuzzi.
We mostly agree in theory, but we were…
– FRANCIS – BULLBITCOIN.COM (@francispouliot_) April 29, 2024
Pouliot expressed his frustration over the incident, stating that “the only damage done is to mess with the testing of open source Bitcoin application builders and waste their time.”
A member of the Bitcoin Talk Thread called the controversy the “testnet war,” suggesting that individuals such as Lopp should be banned from participating in Bitcoin testnet activities. The member called Lopp a potential threat to the overall security of the Bitcoin network.
Weese commented on X that following the incident, due to the high frequency of new blocks generated every hour, it is impossible to catch up, regardless of the synchronization speed. He suggested that unauthorized testing networks may need to be shut down permanently.
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