Tag: Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

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Dash (DASH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC) Updated To Tackle the DoS Vulnerability Addressed by the New Bitcoin Core

Dash (DASH) team announced the launch of the new Dash Core 0.12.3.3 to tackle the Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability addressed Tuesday by the new Bitcoin Core version. Besides Dash (DASH), the teams responsible for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC) were the first to announce the updates of their software clients and are urging the respective communities of miners to install them as soon as possible.

Dash (DASH) launched Dash Core 0.12.3.3 update

In the case of Dash, the announcement of the update to Dash Core 0.12.3.3, released this Wednesday, notes that it is “correction of a critical bug in the Dash Core 0.12.3.x release series” and explains that the update is related to the Bitcoin Core vulnerability, recently discovered and resolved this Tuesday with the announcement of a new release.

“A major vulnerability was recently discovered in the Bitcoin Core code base that can cause a node that receives a specially forged block with double-spending transactions to crash,” says on the Dash Forum.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) also updated to tackle the DoS vulnerability

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) client software team, Bitcoin ABC, notified on Tuesday through its Twitter account, soon after the new Bitcoin Core update, that a new version of Bitcoin ABC will be available, correcting “an error” they did not specify.

Most probably, the mysterious “error” they were talking about was also related to the security flaw discovered by Bitcoin (BTC) community of devs and tackled with the Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 version.

Litecoin (LTC) 0.16.3 launched soon after Bitcoin Core

In the case of Litecoin (LTC), it was not necessary to clarify that the new version of its client, published shortly before midnight on Tuesday, was due to the DoS vulnerability discovered in Bitcoin Core, already corrected in the latest version of it.

Litecoin’s development team uses the same terminology in its versions as the Bitcoin Core.

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CoinText Startup Allows Users to Send Bitcoin Cash (BCH) via SMS

A startup called CoinText has developed a solution to send Bitcoin Cash (BCH) via SMS. That would allow the adoption of this cryptocurrency to rise in areas where there is no good Internet connectivity.

CoinText allows its users to send Bitcoin Cash (BCH) via SMS

The CoinText tool is now available and has enabled the first Bitcoin Cash (BCH) transactions via SMS, according to a tweet published by the company on August 31st. CoinText currently offers its services in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, and Sweden, according to the company.

According to the information on its website, CoinText works by using each user’s full number (including area and operator codes) as a unique identifier to create the seed of a new Bitcoin Cash (BCH) wallet. Once a portfolio has been generated, the application provides an API that communicates with a global SMS gateway provider that provides network access and allows coins to be sent via text messages without the need for an Internet connection. CoinText will charge a flat fee of 10 BCH satoshis.

The team warns that the platform does not store any information and depends on some third party services and all transactions are immediately settled in the blockchain. For this reason, they do not recommend its use for storing large quantities of coins.

Sending cryptocurrencies via SMS is not a new method

The CoinText method is something new for sending Bitcoin Cash (BCH) via SMS, but, in the past, similar tools have been developed for sending other cryptocurrencies. For example, in early August, a Californian company called Intuit was able to patent this kind of service for Bitcoin (BTC).

Similarly, an update made by the Samourai Wallet in January included a similar tool that offers the ability to send Bitcoin (BTC) via text messaging, just like CoinText does with Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Also in August, a startup launched an application that allows its users to send Litecoin (LTC) via Telegram instant messaging app. The Zuluc Republic, the company behind the project, announced that it plans to include the SMS feature.

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Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Hash Rate Drops, Putting The Blockchain At Risk

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hash rate drop below 8% of Bitcoin (BTC) total hash rate makes the Bitcoin Cash network more vulnerable to a block retention attack, which could cause insolvency in some cryptocurrency exchange platforms.

During August, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hash rate remained below 10% of Bitcoin’s processing power, while it even dropped to 6.5% at some points. That is due to the migration of some mining groups that may not find BCH mining profitable anymore, and the strategy of mining larger blocks in a shorter amount of time, although the number of transactions has not been shown to be growing.

The main risk of a hash rate drop in a network using the Proof-of-Work protocol (PoW) protocol is that a group of miners may control 51% or more of the nodes, and that’s possible because Bitcoin Cash (BCH) uses the same mining algorithm as Bitcoin (BTC), known as Sha-256.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hash rate drop increases the risk for double-spending attacks

While Bitcoin (BTC) is a more extensive network that relies on the joint work of groups of miners with greater technical resources, the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain is not so robust in this regards. Thus, the migration of the resources to the smaller network poses a risk if the miners intend to create a longer chain in secret, which then replaces the short blockchain and invalidates some transactions through a block retention attack.

That would make it easier for them, for example, to make a bulky Bitcoin Cash (BCH) deposit in a cryptocurrency exchange platform, and then to buy other cryptos in exchange on the same trading platform and sell them immediately.

That procedure becomes fraudulent when the perpetrators reverse the initial transaction using a block retention attack, leading to double-spending. There are also other fraudulent procedures that are facilitated by a low hash rate which permits validating transactions with only a few confirmations.

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Yesterday, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Community Celebrated 1 Year Of Coin’s Existence

Yesterday, on August 1st, we marked one year since the launch of the User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF) that made it possible to activate Segregated Witness (SegWit), a solution to the problems of scalability and information management in the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain. During that time, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) emerged.

As a result of this community decision, Bitcoin (BTC) main network was the scene of a fork from which the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) broke off, a token whose promoters wanted to position as the “real” Bitcoin. The disagreement over the size of the blocks generated was the primary trigger for this proposal.

It has been described as Independence Day, as the users of the leading cryptocurrency in the market imposed their criteria to the attempt to stop this improvement by the promoters of the increase in the size of the blocks.

From the beginning, the developers of the protocol advocated the application of SegWit via UASF, while the promoters of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and, among them Jihan Wu, CEO of the mining equipment manufacturing company, Bitmain, bet on the application of a hard-fork where the capacity of the blocks would be considerably increased.

Yesterday we marked one year since the User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF) that gave birth to SegWit and Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Pieter Wuille presented this scalability solution during the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong in 2016. The update was received with reluctance, but when the implementation and signaling of SegWit became more evident, the proposal was accepted.

The great debate over the size of the blocks as a potential solution to scalability caused the community to split up. The leading promoters of the hard-fork signed an agreement in New York, with which they signed the need for the modification to take place.

Additionally to Bitmain and Roger Ver, other actors such as Huobi, BTCCPool, Bitmain, F2Pool, BTCTop, ViaBTC, BiXin, BW, 1Hash, Canoe, BATPool, and Bitkan had signed this document, despite the fact that the group opposing the proposal was much larger.

One of the main turning points is that this modification followed a mandatory scheme to change the node’s software, overriding the blocks generated before its activation. However, the Bitcoin (BTC) community decided to give in to SegWit and its User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF) scheme.

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Mysterious BitPico Group Threatened They Commence “Stress Test” Attack On Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network is the next target of the mysterious BitPico group, which was responsible for the June 22nd attack and which, as they announced, will continue over the upcoming months.

That is what the members of the group have said since June 21st through the Twitter account @BitPico. They warn that they plan to extend the stress test to more than 5000 nodes in the following six weeks. The announcement of BitPico has generated mixed reactions within the cryptocurrency community. However, there are also voices that say that it is only “smoke and mirrors.”

We have redesigned our LN stress test kit for $bch #bcash @bitcoin Why? It’s time to determine how centralized @rogerkver really is and we’re 100% sure we can divide the network into multiple bifurcations. We will see a 51% attack on #bitcoin #cash in September.

BitPico group, on Twitter

BitPico group became famous for conducting stress tests on the Bitcoin (BTC) network

The stress tests are mechanisms to test the reliability and robustness of a software or digital platform under extreme conditions of use. One of the most traditional forms is excessive sending of requests and running under limited hardware conditions. Attackers seek to saturate the program to its breaking point where potentially dangerous defects can appear.

Stress tests are also used by devs to determine whether a platform will perform optimally in the conditions of intense attacks on it. That is, to test its performance if the actual load may exceed the expected capacity.

The debate over the possible purposes of this type of stress tests on Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BTC) networks reached the Reddit platform where users began to discuss the consequences of the attack.

The majority of the Bitcoin (BTC) community’s members believe that the BitPico group’s attempt will not make any harm due to the Job Test PoW algorithm that keeps the entire network secure. On the other hand, some argue that the purpose of the attackers is to create the so-called Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) sequence to put Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in disadvantage.

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