91
BGP leaks and cryptocurrencies
Over the few last hours, a dozen news stories have broken about how an attacker attempted (and perhaps managed) to steal cryptocurrencies using a BGP leak.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 154 posts.
92
Satoshi leaked his Los Angeles IP address (2016)
Chapter 6 – California In the Jan of 2009 when Hal and Satoshi were working on Bitcoin Alpha version, Hal encountered an error with the software and he posted the debug log to the mailing lis…
93
Bitcoin mining on a 55 year old IBM 1401 mainframe: 80 seconds per hash
Could an IBM mainframe from the 1960s mine Bitcoin? The idea seemed crazy, so I decided to find out. I implemented the Bitcoin hash algorith...
94
95
Bitcoin contracts
Bitcoin is designed to support a wide variety of transaction types. Although currently the majority of transactions are standard payments to address it is possible to build more complex protocols.
96
CWI cryptanalist discovers new cryptographic attack in Flame spy malware
Cryptanalyst Marc Stevens from the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, known for breaking the https security in 2008 using a cryptanalytic attack on MD5, analyzed the recent Flame virus this week.
97
MakerDAO’s “DAI” stablecoin is breaking, as predicted
Background This is a follow-up from an earlier post, “Stablecoins are doomed to fail,” from December 10th. I’ll keep this one short. Long have I been a critic of the “stable…
98
An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation
{{ content|truncate(160) }}
99
100
101
FTX Contagion
Charting the FTX collapse.
102
103
Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
On 2/2/2022, I reported a critical security issue to Optimism—an "L2 scaling solution" for Ethereum—that would allow an attacker to replicate money on any chain using their "OVM 2.0" fork of go-ethereum (which they call l2geth).
104
105
Princeton Bitcoin textbook is now freely available
The first complete draft of the Princeton Bitcoin textbook is now freely available. We’re very happy with how the book turned out: it’s comprehensive, at over 300 pages, but has a conversational style that keeps it readable. If you’re looking to truly understand how Bitcoin works at a technical level and have a basic…
106
Reading the Silk Road configuration
Many of us believe it wasn't the FBI who discovered the hidden Silk Road server, but the NSA (or other intelligence organization). We believ...
107
The Web3 Fraud
By now effectively all ;login:’s readers have heard the term “web3” and “dapps” bandied about as if they are some great revolution. They are not. The technical underpinnings are so terrible that it is clear they exist only to hype the underlying cryptocurrencies. The actual utility of these “decentralized” systems is…
108
Breaking the Ledger Security Model
In this post, I’m going to discuss a vulnerability I discovered in Ledger hardware wallets. The vulnerability arose due to Ledger’s use of a custom architecture to work around many of the limitations of their Secure Element.
109
110
Ethereum: A Turing-Complete Cryptocurrency
A full overview of what Ethereum is, how it works, what it does and how to start using or building on it. Explained in simple terms.
111
NFTs and a Thousand True Fans
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) offer fundamentally better economics for creators by removing rent-seeking, enabling granular pricing, and reducing customer acquisition costs.
112
Brave Wallet: a secure crypto wallet, built natively in a web3 browser
Brave Wallet is a secure crypto wallet, built right into the Brave privacy browser. No extension required.
113
114
AWS and Blockchain
This week saw the cancellation of the Australian Stock Exchange’s long-running effort to build a blockchain-based trading system. Which, oddly, has me thinking of 2016, when AWS decided not to make a strategic investment in blockchain, with my input a contributing factor. It felt like a good story while it was…
115
116
Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half
This Halloween week, GFN Thursday is delivering a fresh batch of gaming treats. Something wicked this blade comes. S-GAME’s Phantom Blade Zero launches on GeForce...
117
Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash
On Wednesday 10 August, the FIOD arrested a 29-year-old man in Amsterdam. He is suspected of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering through the mixing of cryptocurrencies through the decentralised Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash. Multiple arrests are not ruled out…
118
119
120