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The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

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Re: The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

#21

Post by hobs »

aneth4 wrote: post #13
rockyleal wrote: post #4

I think there is a lot of sensationalism in the way this issue has been aproached. To inject data into the blockchain in this way is comparable (although not identical) to writing the same 'evil urls' in a dollar bill with a pen, and then passing it around. It is a problem that exists in a different layer than the currency, even if it is to some degree 'passed on' through the currency. Likewise, the solution (imho) l…

This is wrong on all points. A dollar bill is seen by an infitesimally small number of users as opposed to 100% of full bitcoin nodes. Dollar bills are also transient and easy to destroy, whereas the blockchain is permanent and forever. Finally, there is no entity that could determine unacceptable content or delete it, and if there were it would carry the standard abuse problems of any censorship program. So while th…

In terms of taking down the link, I think he means on the server it is on, not remove it from the blockchain.

Re: The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

#22

Post by jasonzemos »

ceejayoz wrote: post #18
LAMike wrote: post #17

What's the worst thing you can transmit with 20 bytes? A link to a website? A couple of the 7 words? A "yo mama" joke? C'mon this is a BS linkbait article

A link to child pornography, perhaps, with which law enforcement would have an excuse to make any selected bitcoin user's life a living hell.

A link to something isn't possession of something. Any URL might become worthless anyway once the real offending source material is removed.

Re: The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

#23

Post by spullara »

ck2 wrote: post #16

I guess they should have disallowed vowels eh? Has spam appeared yet? Because you know that is next.

Without anyone actively looking at it, addressee spam probably won't matter. If you could send from a chosen address you might have a point though as it would show up in people's wallets.

Re: The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

#25

Post by sneak »

jerf wrote: post #15
tyre wrote: post #9

This will neither bring bitcoin down or change it forever. Any information contained in those bytes is just that: information. What can you say in 20 bytes that can have permanent, material damage to human beings? A wonderfully sensationalist title, but really nothing to back it up.

"What can you say in 20 bytes that can have permanent, material damage to human beings?" The AACS encryption key was 16 bytes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy In general, private keys are in that range of byte size.

They were, indirectly, drawing attention the non-import of that particular byte sequence - it literally does not matter, and the whole thing was to illustrate that a) you can't censor tiny speech effectively and b) DRM is doomed and the keys will always be reverse-engineered.

Saying something meaningful enough to get someone jailed for possessing a drive with the string on it (the criteria for this to be actually harmful to bitcoin) is nearly impossible in 20 bytes in most parts of the developed world.

The article is sensationalist bullshit.

Re: The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

#26

Post by tlrobinson »

This brings up some interesting questions. One could also XOR some illegal data with the text of the US Constitution, then claim that the Constitution "contains" that data, you just need to XOR it with this particular key.

Obviously that's absurd, but where do you draw the line? You need specialized software and the 32 byte transaction ID in order to extract the data.

What other permanent public records could be manipulated like this?

Re: The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

#27

Post by sneak »

frisco wrote: post #2

There's already a proposal floating around on the dev list to introduce a new address type, P2SH^2, which would allow the relevant data fields currently being used to stuff the info discussed in the article to become hashes. This would have the effect that if you wanted to stuff arbitrary data, you'd be limited to finding hash collisions. See the thread here: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=3070…

Entirely unnecessary. Transaction fees address the crapflooding issue, and the fact that you can embed only a very small amount of arbitrary data in each transaction means that you're unlikely to be able to harm someone else by forcing them to "possess" your various short byte sequences (which will, on disk, of course be interspersed with the rest of the transaction data).

This is to say nothing about the fact that everyone else running bitcoin will also possess these bytes in their blockchains, making the possession of them rather unextraordinary.

This whole article is just the latest in "Bitcoin doomed to fail, and here's why!" bullshit that's been going on for what feels like a decade but is really only 3 years or so.

Re: The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

#28

Post by sneak »

Xcelerate wrote: post #3

I would think the solution to this problem is to somehow prove to the blockchain that the address was indeed produced by the SHA256 RIPEMD160 process. I would think mathematically there is some way to do this without revealing what it was you hashed. I mean, you can verify that you are who you say you are simply by using your private key to sign a message; I would think a comparable process would work for this. EDIT:…

> I would think the solution to this problem

I see no problem here. Perhaps you could describe it?

Re: The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

#29

Post by sneak »

ceejayoz wrote: post #18
LAMike wrote: post #17

What's the worst thing you can transmit with 20 bytes? A link to a website? A couple of the 7 words? A "yo mama" joke? C'mon this is a BS linkbait article

A link to child pornography, perhaps, with which law enforcement would have an excuse to make any selected bitcoin user's life a living hell.

A link to insert boogeyman here which is also on the hard disks of a few hundred thousand other people, downloaded automatically, and stored in a file with a dozen other gigs of bitcoin transaction data.

Sounds like an airtight case.

Re: The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

#30

Post by batgaijin »

tlrobinson wrote: post #26

This brings up some interesting questions. One could also XOR some illegal data with the text of the US Constitution, then claim that the Constitution "contains" that data, you just need to XOR it with this particular key. Obviously that's absurd, but where do you draw the line? You need specialized software and the 32 byte transaction ID in order to extract the data. What other permanent public records could be mani…

That's the principle behind the OFF P2P system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owner_free_filing_system

US legal system is based on intent so it's kind of pointless.

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