The easy way out

Posted Nov 9, 2012 15:42 UTC (Fri) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205)
In reply to: The easy way out by robert_s
Parent article: Let’s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can’t Eliminate Them (Wired)

> Or someone with enough computing power might cause bitcoin to ramp up their "work proof" hardness, to the point that normal people can't really compete.

The bitcoin network is currently doing roughly 25 trillion (10^12) hashes per second. It is the most powerful computing network in the world, so somebody would need to invest a -lot- of money, and a -lot- of power for a -lot- of time to muck with it in any meaningful way.

> And this is totally ignoring the possibility of finding any cryptographic flaws in the algorithms which could make fraud (or "theft" - don't know what you'd call it) easy.

This would be very bad -- and not just for bitcoin, but for everything using ECC.

The easy way out

Posted Nov 11, 2012 1:15 UTC (Sun) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

"This would be very bad -- and not just for bitcoin, but for everything using ECC."

Even with theoretically perfect cryptography algorithms it is *very* difficult to design the surrounding mechanisms in a way that is immune to attack.

I mean even SSL/TLS protocol designers and implementers don't get it 100% right.