We are aware of the problem, and discuss possible actions.
All actions mean a change in Neoscrypt or a change of the mining process.
This needs to be discussed and decided carefully, so don’t expect a solution within a week or two.
Watever is decided the changes will be implemented in code version 0.19 or 0.20, as extended tests will be required before implementing on the main net.

@gonnaforget said in Feathercoin - Analysis of possible maximum Transactions block / Dustcoin "attack" 25/10/2016:

What’s up with all these attacks against FTC? Was it because there was someone who was big into a competing coin, or was it just for fun?

There are a few things quoted as “Attacks”. There have not been times when it is proved there is a deliberate attack, i.e. someone has paid or has enough power to try to double spend.

This resulted in the first major update to Feathercoin to implement Automatic Check pointing or ACP. Once this happened and there was a “double spend issue”, FTC would reject that chain - i.e. It becomes an Orphan chain.

However, Feathercoin still abides by the normal rules and the longest chain wins. So there are 2 competing chains untill the attacker error chain gives up or the normal chain becomes longer.

There similar reasons Bitcoin has also suffered longer orphan chains than originally specified, but FTC does suffer a couple of long chains early on.

There is another known “attack”, it turned out to be someone testing, one was an attempt to flood the network with dust payments, was noticed later but had no detrimental effect.

I designed eHRC initially as a potential replacement for ACP but in the end it was used to reduce the effect of coin switching. It does make it harder for someone to achieve network dominance for long enough to do anything. So we don’t tend to get the long orphan chains.

@gonnaforget
At least for now, ASIC is out of the Picture. But Multipools can still cause a simillar effect

@Wellenreiter Cool, thats what i thought. ASIC isn’t something i’d want to embrace for FTC either!

@Lordas Someone threw at least 11GH at it very briefly. That’s a lot more than just a multiport switch, like nicehash or mining-dutch; they only have about 1-2GH total neoscrypt at the moment… :unamused:

Hey, @AmDD Thanks for taking the time to explain what was happening, we don’t get a chance to check the analysis on an anonymous network.

I was under the impression you should be able to conglomerate your dust payments back into one address. It would be worth looking into that a bit more, maybe @Ghostlander could comment…

FTC Block chain analysis

FTC Admin’s run a “planned” condition monitoring maintenance system for FTC. Explorer, support tickets and Members / Admin observation of the network highlight any changes from normal operations. One of analysis capability and template spreadsheets have been created to look at FTC specific parameters, like for eHRC. Some monitoring methods were created to test changes, like eHRC, others to investigate issues. (**)

Just to be clear, AmDD is talking about a test of the network on 25/10/2016. Which triggered a look at FTC Blockchain performance, from examining the FTC to LTC historical transaction frequency.

http://forum.feathercoin.com/topic/8883/feathercoin-analysis-of-possible-maximum-transactions-block-dustcoin-attack-25-10-2016

The analysis in this thread is 21/5/2017, which was triggered by the previous analysis, to compare with current details and the general increase in FTC mining, price and transactions over the last 3 months …

(**) FTC has no payed employees, wrapper is a chart contributer, other members have helped.

The analysis is ongoing but the preliminary data analysis is on Github :
https://github.com/wrapperband/FTCBlockTimeAnalysis/tree/master/2017-05-21 FTCTransactionAnalysis

@Wellenreiter ok thanks for your help. I have the wallet.dat file so I guess ill just wait for the binary file so that I can upgrade.

Thanks again.

@coinotron Not a good idea. Even if you land on a correct chain, your orphan rate will be too high.

Researchers have discovered multiple botnets January 27, 2016

In 2014, law enforcement agencies revealed that they had disrupted a Russian botnet that targeted personal bank accounts and stole $100 million.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev cyber security researchers have discovered and traced approximately six botnets by analyzing data collected from past cyber attacks. The research was conducted at Deutsche Telekom Innovation Labs@BGU and was announced at Cybertech 2016 in Tel Aviv today.

Botnets are networks of malicious, remotely updatable code that covertly lurk on infected computers. Using botnets, which until now were largely untraceable, hackers and cyber criminals can carry out powerful attacks, spread viruses, generate spam, and commit other types of online crime.

http://phys.org/news/2016-01-multiple-botnets.html

Know your Enemy: Tracking Botnets : Using honeynets to learn more about Bots

https://www.honeynet.org/book/export/html/50

Unfortunately, it is all Scrypt ASICs, so they can’t switch to mining FTC. ;)

So they must have “pool” switched to get a big change in p2pool hash.

My idea here isn’t to describe the attack and consequences from it. My idea was to start thinking how to protect the end user from scenario like this one. One solution ( I can say painless ) is to add feature to the wallet that will recommend to the end user what transaction fee need to be paid in order to complete the transaction in some time frame. Another solutions require architecture change and I don’t think is possible to be done in the near future :)

As the Drops are caused by several hosts, and the ports are in the range used as source port for outgoing connections, it may be just caused by not fully established or terminated outbound connections from your client where the other party either didn’t receive the disconnect packed or a timeout has occured and the other party is responding so late, that the temporary rule on the fw has been deleted already.

Just guessing here.

you could try a ‘netstat -tcp -n’ to check if you have corresponding connections in state ‘sync send’ or ‘time wait’ on your PC.

The command is linux syntax, for windows the options may be slightly different