GeoCold hacker hits 51% attack on Bitcoin Private (BTCP)
A "cryptotechnical" show
According to Bitcoin.com, more than 750 spectators were present on the pirate's Twitch channel, which has therefore started to carry out its piracy operations live, as announced.
Initially, the individual intended to attack the crypto Einsteinium (EMC2), but when the time came to implement his plans, the community EMC2 had multiplied by 15 the usual hashrate (computing power) on their crypto, to reach a peak of 1.4 TH / s, making the attack all the more expensive to perform.
Counter Attacks, Censures, But 51% Attack Successful
Banned from twitch
- GeoCold "Mischief-Maker" (@ geocold51) October 13, 2018
As we can read on his tweet above, as he approached the goal, GeoCold was banned from his channel Twitch, where he broadcast his attack, for reports of "attempts or threats to hurt" (Hurt a blockchain! - This is a fun humanization of our favorite technology).
Back on another broadcast medium, Stream.me, the hacker was also banned in just 15 minutes, by numerous reports.
But that was enough, because at the time of this second banishment, GeoCold had acquired more than 51% of the transaction validation hashrate on the BTCP blockchain network.
This computing power was simply rented, for the equivalent of a few hundred dollars in BTC, on the NiceHash platform.
And despite the counter-attack by the community of Bitcoin Private, who had taken advantage of a GeoCold IP leak to generate a real DDoS on the web interface of its mining pool, by temporarily disabling its display, it has managed to carry out its action.
With a hashrate of 10 MSol / s alone, compared to the 16 MSol / s total of the network, he was able to create the longest chain of blocks and, if he had persisted, he could have created a fork of the blockchain OPGT.
Update on the stream. Got banned from two very fast streaming platforms. I'm going to try to find a platform where I can be assured report spamming will not work. If not I'll just post a video on youtube. But attack wise: We got ~ 70% of BTCP's network and I was about to fork it
- GeoCold "Mischief-Maker" (@ geocold51) October 13, 2018
However, it has not, at first sight, been used to double-spend BTCP, but rather to demonstrate the weakness of cryptocurrency with small hashrate, which can easily undergo such attacks of takeover of the validation. blocks.
GeoCold, even though it must have been an "ethical hacker", caused a great panic on small altcoins, whose communities feared for their crypto. But this in any case highlights the real need for 51% attack mitigation measures on Proof-of-Work cryptos.