Vertcoin 51% Attack ‘Motive Uncertain’ as Hackers Lose up to $4,000

Unknown hackers have tried to launch a second 51% assault on Vertcoin (VTC) however ended up paying for the privilege out of their very own pockets.

As Vertcoin’s lead maintainer James Lovejoy revealed in a report on the assault on Dec. 2, a malicious entity focused cryptocurrency trade Bittrex so as to manipulate the Vertcoin blockchain.

Hackers paid not less than $440 to assault VTC

Vertcoin forked off from Bitcoin (BTC) in 2014 and skilled a serious assault in December final yr, throughout which hackers stole funds worth $100,000.

This time, nonetheless, it seems the exploit was a lot much less profitable.

“Based mostly in the marketplace costs in the course of the assault’s preparation and the issue of the blocks the attacker produced, we estimate the attacker spent between 0.5-1 BTC to carry out the assault,” Lovejoy defined.

Because of this, the hackers seem to have come out with a web lack of between 0.06 BTC ($440) and 0.56 BTC ($4,100):

“The entire worth of the block rewards the assault obtained is 13825 VTC (~0.44 BTC). Given the assault was possible not worthwhile to carry out based mostly solely on block rewards, the motivation for the assault isn’t sure.”

Combating for scraps

Bittrex is VTC’s fundamental buying and selling venue. After noticing suspicious exercise, Lovejoy requested the trade halt VTC pairs, which appeared to restrict the assault’s success.

“Given the reorg was simply deeper than 600 blocks (Bittrex’s affirmation requirement for VTC), it’s potential that Bittrex was the unique goal, however the double-spend portion assault was aborted due to Bittrex disabling their pockets earlier than the fork may very well be launched,” he added.

VTC/USD has fallen round 7% to $0.23 previously 24 hours, however the transfer is broadly insignificant throughout the context of 2019 highs of $0.61 seen in June.

As Cointelegraph reported, Bitcoin stays rather more immune to 51% assaults thanks to its provably decentralized construction and unrivaled hash rate.

As well-known pundit Andreas Antonopoulos beforehand noted, with Bitcoin, such an assault would value round $1 billion for a 10-minute offensive, one thing which in itself is all however inconceivable to obtain.