Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
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Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
#2Whats the best way to replicate these states on localhost?
When using the L1s, it is easy to fork the current state of the network with Brownie and bang at smart contracts for free using fake gas on localhost. Reserving any advantage or unexpected behavior you find for the bug report, or redeploying it on mainnet for the bug bounty paying the gas just that one time
But with L2s in the mix, especially Optimism, how would one do the same? Would it be like two instances of Brownie in virtual environments? Kind of like having a cluster of microservices booted up in Vanguard on localhost?
Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
#3Whats the best way to replicate these states on localhost? When using the L1s, it is easy to fork the current state of the network with Brownie and bang at smart contracts for free using fake gas on localhost. Reserving any advantage or unexpected behavior you find for the bug report, or redeploying it on mainnet for the bug bounty paying the gas just that one time But with L2s in the mix, especially Optimism, how wo…
Yeah, so to run your own Optimism full node--the "whole stack"--you need 1) a normal Ethereum full node of some kind, 2) an Optimism data-transport-layer service (which scrapes the L1 looking for L2 transactions and provides a web service to access just that data), and then 3) an Optimism l2geth instance (which is an Ethereum node modified to read its transaction batches from the DTL).
Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
#4Page seems to be down. Can’t connect to server
Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
#5This is a concerning aspect of Ethereum's strategy to push scaling to layer-2 networks: Ethereum is a heavily audited and tested protocol that runs an extremely decentralized network of diverse clients. L2s can be...an AWS instance running arbitrary buggy code. Much of the confidence in the "base layer" that people using Ethereum currently experience will be significantly undermined if mundane transactions wend in and out of different L2s.
Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
#6Whats the best way to replicate these states on localhost? When using the L1s, it is easy to fork the current state of the network with Brownie and bang at smart contracts for free using fake gas on localhost. Reserving any advantage or unexpected behavior you find for the bug report, or redeploying it on mainnet for the bug bounty paying the gas just that one time But with L2s in the mix, especially Optimism, how wo…
Yeah, so to run your own Optimism full node--the "whole stack"--you need 1) a normal Ethereum full node of some kind, 2) an Optimism data-transport-layer service (which scrapes the L1 looking for L2 transactions and provides a web service to access just that data), and then 3) an Optimism l2geth instance (which is an Ethereum node modified to read its transaction batches from the DTL).
Wow. A tutorial on doing that would be great.
Speaking of "bug bounties", I use the term liberally as a euphemism for hacking these contracts and taking everything for yourself under the observation that company/community bug bounty systems are broken and undervalued for the value they provide. Although seen as a euphamism now, I think the term is accurate especially when looking at how bounty was used in the American frontier or Wild West.
You made $2,000,042 from this without any drama, in a quick timeline even though it was technically outside of the scope of the program! I think many in the hackernews audience would have liked to have known that from the get go. Many people ignoring blockchain would pivot immediately to at least doing smart contract bug bounty research on the side just from knowing that alone, learning the extremely lucrative and marketable skills in the process. If you formatted the article to the bug-bounty timeline to payout format. You should even show some people a material thing that what you bought with it, because many people still don't understand that this is analogous and convertible to money in your bank account especially at these convenient amounts.
How much could you have seized with this bug at the time?
Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
#7Page seems to be down. Can’t connect to server
(This has hopefully been fixed; the way I added SSL to my website--which I only the night before last--was "ridiculous" and apparently not at all up for the challenge :/. I thankfully had given myself a backup plan--offloading the SSL to nginx--which I was able to switch to quickly, but I should have really pushed my update today with that configuration.)
Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, so to run your own Optimism full node--the "whole stack"--you need 1) a normal Ethereum full node of some kind, 2) an Optimism data-transport-layer service (which scrapes the L1 looking for L2 transactions and provides a web service to access just that data), and then 3) an Optimism l2geth instance (which is an Ethereum node modified to read its transaction batches from the DTL).
Wow. A tutorial on doing that would be great. Speaking of "bug bounties", I use the term liberally as a euphemism for hacking these contracts and taking everything for yourself under the observation that company/community bug bounty systems are broken and undervalued for the value they provide. Although seen as a euphamism now, I think the term is accurate especially when looking at how bounty was used in the America…
> ...because many people still don't understand that this is analogous and convertible to money in your bank account especially at these convenient amounts...
FWIW this project doesn't have its own token (this L2 uses ETH as its currency just like the base layer), so the bug bounty payout is denominated in actual USD.
Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
#9This is a concerning aspect of Ethereum's strategy to push scaling to layer-2 networks: Ethereum is a heavily audited and tested protocol that runs an extremely decentralized network of diverse clients. L2s can be...an AWS instance running arbitrary buggy code. Much of the confidence in the "base layer" that people using Ethereum currently experience will be significantly undermined if mundane transactions wend in an…
Isn't the whole lightning network for bitcoin also L2?
Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
#10This is a concerning aspect of Ethereum's strategy to push scaling to layer-2 networks: Ethereum is a heavily audited and tested protocol that runs an extremely decentralized network of diverse clients. L2s can be...an AWS instance running arbitrary buggy code. Much of the confidence in the "base layer" that people using Ethereum currently experience will be significantly undermined if mundane transactions wend in an…
That's an issue with all cryptocurrency infrastructure though: projects need to be proven to demonstrate robust value and it's probably one of the most adversarial spaces in software. History has shown that hacks and exploits of projects hurt the price of the native taken but do not really damage the long-term earned trust.