#24: The Attack of the Attack Vectors: a 51% Attack on Vertcoin & the Demise of ASIC Resistance + a Social Engineering Attack on ETCDEV and npm Libraries

QuantLayer Podcast

This episode is all about attack vectors in crypto. We look at a 51% attack on Vertcoin, and how ASIC resistance is turning out to be a massive security bug, not a feature. We also look at Ethereum Classic and a social engineering attack on the ETCDEV team. Finally, we discuss the event-stream attack which robbed crypto wallets that used that npm library, and what that means for open source governance.

Topics:

• ASIC resistance is a massive security bug, not a feature
• What ASIC resistance is
• Vertcoin is currently being 51% attacked
• What NiceHash is
• ETCDEV shutdown
• What ETC is
• Who ETCDEV is
• Event-stream situation

Links:

Vertcoin - MIT Digital Currency Initiative - https://dci.mit.edu/video-gallery/?tag=vertcoin About NiceHash - https://www.nicehash.com/about About Crypto51 - https://www.crypto51.app/about.html Vertcoin is currently being 51% attacked - https://medium.com/coinmonks/vertcoin-vtc-is-currently-being-51-attacked-53ab633c08a4 On Dec 3, Igor put out the following statement - https://twitter.com/etcdev/status/1069625401515872256/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1069625401515872256&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsbtc.com%2F2018%2F12%2F04%2Fcrypto-bear-market-strikes-ethereum-classic-etc-development-group-folds%2F Event-stream situation Synopsis: - https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116#issuecomment-441759047 - https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116#issuecomment-441749105 Dominic Tarr’s response: - https://gist.github.com/dominictarr/9fd9c1024c94592bc7268d36b8d83b3a Kate Sills - https://twitter.com/kate_sills/status/1067202990690291712