Bitcoin Stack Exchange
Bitcoin Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [botnets]

A botnet is a collection of compromised (usually virused or hacked) computers connected to the Internet, usually used for malicious purposes.

A botnet is a collection of compromised (usually virused or hacked) computers connected to the Internet, usually used for malicious purposes.

7 questions
16
votes
3 answers

What can be done about the no-transaction block relayer (currently 71.123.170.150)?

An unknown major solo miner (currently IP 71.123.170.150), most likely a botnet, is relaying blocks with zero transactions. Two weeks ago this miner constituted ~15% of the network, now it constitutes ~30%. If the growth rate continues, in about two…
BinaryMage
  • 1,346
  • 10
  • 22
8
votes
4 answers

Would any of the current botnets be able to launch and sustain a 51% attack?

The "owners" of botnets probably runs them as businesses, meaning that they will always seek profit-optimization. Do you believe that it is a matter of time before they will seek to launch and sustain a 51% attack on Bitcoins? If one were to achieve…
David
  • 3,444
  • 2
  • 27
  • 37
8
votes
3 answers

Have there been reports of botnets mining Bitcoin / crypto-currencies?

Is the threat of Botnets using massive amounts of CPUs/GPUs to mine Bitcoin, or some CPU-friendly coin, purely theoretical at this point? Or have there been reports of this actually happening? I know of trojans stealing Bitcoin wallets, this is not…
ripper234
  • 26,452
  • 30
  • 111
  • 246
4
votes
1 answer

Is there any evidence that the Litecoin network is significantly affected by botnet mining?

Litecoin uses a hashing algorithm that, so far, is best run on CPUs rather than GPUs. Because most computers are not purchased for gaming and don't have powerful GPUs (which would have been useful for Bitcoin mining, at least until ASICs arrived on…
Highly Irregular
  • 10,910
  • 6
  • 52
  • 102
2
votes
2 answers

Couldn't Microsoft execute 51% attack?

There are billions of computers out there running Windows O.S., putting aside the reputation risks, technically, Microsoft could add a backdoor to force users hardware to mine BTC. Is the combined computer power of those billions of PCs running…
pee-yay-2021
  • 111
  • 1
  • 7
1
vote
1 answer

Did the Bitcoin network reduce spam?

In an 2008-11-03 email, Satoshi Nakamoto hypothesized that Bitcoin could actually reduce spam by making botnets more valuable for being part of the Bitcoin network than spamming: The Bitcoin network might actually reduce spam by diverting…
user1086516
  • 113
  • 2
0
votes
1 answer

Measuring levels of spammer participation on the Bitcoin network

Is there any reliable way of estimating the number of spammer controlled miners? I was thinking about the common wisdom that BitCoin should have been implemented with a hashing mechanism that is resistant to distributed processing (i.e. scrypt) and…
Indolering
  • 337
  • 2
  • 15