Author: Tier Nolan 2014-02-10 20:47:46
Published on: 2014-02-10T20:47:46+00:00
The email conversation discusses a potential attack on the Bitcoin blockchain in which an attacker renames a transaction ID before it is confirmed, and if the attacker is fast enough, they can potentially add a new transaction to the blockchain while discarding the original transaction as a double-spend. However, the actual problem in the MtGox incident was that the produced transaction was poorly formatted, causing it to stall. An attacker with a direct connection to MtGox could receive the transaction directly, fix the formatting, and forward it to the network normally. The attacker would then stress the Gox support and refer to the original transaction ID to fool them into refunding already paid Bitcoins to the attacker's virtual Gox-wallet. To prevent this, the new transaction should re-spend at least one of the coins that the first transaction spent to ensure only one can possibly be accepted.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T02:56:07.403772+00:00