Namecoin is Prime for a 51% attack

[BitcoinEXpress]

Right now if I wanted to I could kick in 68 gh/s by myself and literally stop your lock in dead in the tracks. But I said I wouldn't make a move till 19101 and that's the way it will be.

Not really, you'd overrun the people who are not using a locked in client. Those that are locked in will continue as normal. Your mined coins will be useless as they can't be used anywhere.

@DoubleC
I see we are getting Coinhunter level cocky are we DoubleC? I didn't expect that from you. I don't care about using NMC anywhere, ever. If your interested in averting all of this peacefully you know how to contact me directly.

@Davinci
As someone with as limited knowledge as you have in MySQL, Linux and Pool operations I will simply overlook you as being frustrated. Everyone seems to say you are a good guy. This isn't about destruction, it's about making Bitcoin better and even NMC if it survives the fire.

You guys should have listened to ArtForz months ago and you wouldn't be here now.

[doublec]

I see we are getting Coinhunter level cocky are we DoubleC? I didn't expect that from you. I don't care about using NMC anywhere, ever. If your interested in averting all of this peacefully you know how to contact me directly.

Just stating what I believe to be the truth. I know of no way to break a checkpoint and if you have a way, more power to you. It'd be nice if you shared but it seems you're not that way inclined. You should do whatever you feel you need to do. I've already contacted you directly refusing your request to set up an exchange for the Geist Geld chain, sorry.

[Seraphim401]

I released version nc0.3.24.62 with a corrected lockin patch from makomk. Please test.

For now, I suggest we lock in often while we investigate a more permanent solution to the timing attack.

We definitely need more hash power too and that should come with merged mining. If an attack starts, we could restart the chain at the last lockin with merged mining.

Can't find it on the Dot-Bit page.

[BitcoinEXpress]

I see we are getting Coinhunter level cocky are we DoubleC? I didn't expect that from you. I don't care about using NMC anywhere, ever. If your interested in averting all of this peacefully you know how to contact me directly.

Just stating what I believe to be the truth. I know of no way to break a checkpoint and if you have a way, more power to you. It'd be nice if you shared but it seems you're not that way inclined. You should do whatever you feel you need to do. I've already contacted you directly refusing your request to set up an exchange for the Geist Geld chain, sorry.

Well Coinhunter didn't know of a way to bloat the chain either and stated it couldn't be done, "Time Traveling" in the block chain wasn't possible till two days ago and now you are saying it's impossible to invalidate a lock in?

Want to know what the previous two exploits have in common with the lock in bypass? They were announced by ArtForz and discounted as a falsehood. ArtForz and his diabolical genius came up with it, like the Time Travel Exploit, we just enhanced it.

Why do I want a GG Pool and Exchange. Not for profit? I'll make a commitment to never trade there if you open it. The reason is that Lolcust has said he wants to be a target and has a hardened sophisticated chain to serve as guinea pig. What's missing is an exchange and a pool that brings with it dedicated people that develop it and secure it against attacks.

That's the whole reason I am giving you guys advance notice, I want you to harden it, secure it and make it strong. NMC is something you guys care about and will defend. Solidcoin was joke, Ixcoin and I0coin are irrelevant.

Open a GG Pool and an exchange, or help Lolcust do so, you become an NMC hero, make some more money, life is beautiful and I am absolutely positive that Artforz will clue you guys into how to fix you merged mining lockin exploit as well as a few other mind numbingly glaring holes.

Sounds like the better solution to me.

[doublec]

Well Coinhunter didn't know of a way to bloat the chain either and stated it couldn't be done, "Time Traveling" in the block chain wasn't possible till two days ago and now you are saying it's impossible to invalidate a lock in?

I didn't say it was impossible, I said I know of no way. Perhaps you do know a way. Good for you. Feel free to use that knowledge however you want.

Open a GG Pool and an exchange, or help Lolcust do so, you become an NMC hero, make some more money, life is beautiful and I am absolutely positive that Artforz will clue you guys into how to fix you merged mining lockin exploit as well as a few other mind numbingly glaring holes.

Sounds like the better solution to me.

I'm not interested in operating a GG exchange or pool. Any future exchange I open would be on a chain that brings something completely different to the table.

[phelix]

I think somewhere BitcoinEXpress claimed merged mining was flawed. Unfortunately I can not find the post at the moment. What did you mean by that?

[Davincij15]

@Davinci
As someone with as limited knowledge as you have in MySQL, Linux and Pool operations I will simply overlook you as being frustrated. Everyone seems to say you are a good guy. This isn't about destruction, it's about making Bitcoin better and even NMC if it survives the fire.

You guys should have listened to ArtForz months ago and you wouldn't be here now.

Of the last month and half I have spend more time in Linux than I have my entire life. Sure my knowledge is limited but everyone has to start somewhere. I never had a need for linux until now, so I am learning and I have done very well for someone who knew NOTHING about linux 2 months ago.

I'm proud of what I have accomplished even if you destroy it all I have gained a lot and consider my losses as an education fee.

Finally I'd rather be a good person that keeps trying than a good person that does nothing. My poor quality videos educating the public about gold and silver is money and nothing else, is a testament to that.

No kind regards.
Davinci

[makomk]

Well Coinhunter didn't know of a way to bloat the chain either and stated it couldn't be done, "Time Traveling" in the block chain wasn't possible till two days ago and now you are saying it's impossible to invalidate a lock in?

Want to know what the previous two exploits have in common with the lock in bypass? They were announced by ArtForz and discounted as a falsehood. ArtForz and his diabolical genius came up with it, like the Time Travel Exploit, we just enhanced it.

As far as I know ArtForz doesn't have a lock-in bypass though. The problem he found with merged mining is that, because the Namecoin client has no block chain lockins, an attacker can rewrite history to drive down the difficulty, get to the merged mining point relatively cheaply but with a chain that has less total proof of work, then do "free" merged mining to drive the total difficulty on their fork above that of the original.

If any other blockchain decides to switch to merged mining, the developers need to add a block chain lockin at the same time or preferably earlier and they're likely to run into issues if there's a difficulty retargetting between the lockin and the switch-over point. In retrospect it might actually have been safer to specify the threshold based on block timestamps...

[johntobey253]

As far as I know ArtForz doesn't have a lock-in bypass though. The problem he found with merged mining is that, because the Namecoin client has no block chain lockins, an attacker can rewrite history to drive down the difficulty, get to the merged mining point relatively cheaply but with a chain that has less total proof of work, then do "free" merged mining to drive the total difficulty on their fork above that of the original.

So what I read from this is, we'd like a lockin at the merged-mining block. Maybe the next release should simply refuse to accept blocks starting at 19200 (MM start) in the hope that we can quickly agree on a 19199 lock-in and upgrade. Whoever stays at 0.3.24.62 get to see a bunch of noise from the attack, but if we have the majority after MM, that will eventually die off.

But I would like to see some motion on the 2015-out-of-2016 bug, any news there?

[BitcoinEXpress]

As far as I know ArtForz doesn't have a lock-in bypass though. The problem he found with merged mining is that, because the Namecoin client has no block chain lockins, an attacker can rewrite history to drive down the difficulty, get to the merged mining point relatively cheaply but with a chain that has less total proof of work, then do "free" merged mining to drive the total difficulty on their fork above that of the original.

So what I read from this is, we'd like a lockin at the merged-mining block. Maybe the next release should simply refuse to accept blocks starting at 19200 (MM start) in the hope that we can quickly agree on a 19199 lock-in and upgrade. Whoever stays at 0.3.24.62 get to see a bunch of noise from the attack, but if we have the majority after MM, that will eventually die off.

But I would like to see some motion on the 2015-out-of-2016 bug, any news there?

best answer yet, I would follow it.