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DDoSCoin: New Crypto-Currency Rewards Users For Participating In DDoS Attacks (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: "In the most innovative, weirdest, and stupidest idea of the month, two researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Michigan have created a crypto-currency that rewards people for participating in DDoS attacks," reports Softpedia. "Called DDoSCoin, this digital currency rewards a person (the miner) for using their computer as part of a DDoS attack. Just like Bitcoin, DDoSCoin uses cryptographic data to provide a proof-of-work. In DDoSCoin's case, this proof-of-work is extracted from the TLS connection a miner establishes with the website they're supposed to attack." This means that DDoSCoin can be used only with DDoS attacks on TLS-enabled websites. Participating in DDoS attacks gives miners DDoSCoin, which can then be converted in Bitcoin or fiat currency. Furthermore, anyone can request a DDoS attack via the PAY_TO_DDOS transaction. The research paper that proposes DDoSCoin is only a theoretical exercise, and a DDoSCoin crypto-currency does not currently exist in the real world. For now.
Why would we want to encourage users to participate in DDoS attacks by paying them? How is this research? The idea of paying for criminal services using crypto-currency isn't new, so I don't see how this is particularly innovative. And why are researchers being funded to carry out "research" that encourage DDoS attacks?
How about DarwinCoin: stupidity-based currency that eliminates the wielder from the gene pool.
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In the most innovative, weirdest, and stupidest idea of the month ...
Give it time. We're less than half-way through the month. There's plenty more stupid out there.
I can't even wrap my head around the idea of this currency... WHY DOES THIS EXIST? EVEN IN THEORY!
Go away!
Is it spoofable?
Can I simply drop the ddos packets at my outgoing firewall, but still show as having contributed, and having 'done the work' ?
Or setup a target virtual machine on the IP address, configure my router to point at that, and then ddos the shite out of it ?
It really seems like people just don't know how to behave any more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"...two researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder..."
Correction:
"two assholes from the University of Colorado Boulder..."
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
...you'd just show up on /b/ and make a case as to why your intended target was a horrible pedophile/cat abuser/scientologist, then end your post with a link to LOIC.
If you could engender enough outrage to outweigh the "NOT YOUR PERSONAL ARMY"'s, then maybe you'd have something.
USENIX used to be one of my favorite conferences. Important work was presented there. Or at least work that, at the time, seemed like it had the potential to be important, although no program committee has yet been perfect at foreseeing the future...
This just seems like a silly joke taken too far.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
"The academy would like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the researchers at UCB and U of M for their innovative work with crypto currencies and security. In addition to the usual financial grants that the academy bestows upon recipients, we will be awarding several punches in the junk to the researchers involved for taking a good idea and being total tools. Good work gentlemen, and fuck you."
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If someone knows their network is being DDoSed, and the currency is based on proof of a connection to their (supposedly limited) servers... What's to stop them form setting up a local farm of nodes and "issuing" more currency to themselves?
This crashes the market for the DDoS-coin and removes an incentive for other people to attack.
Suddenly there are a lot of stories coming from Softpedia. Nobody ever takes them seriously that have been on the internet a long time. They take freeware and turn it into malware versions. For Slashdot to keep quoting them seems fishy.
Since it is made up money, it does not actually cost them any real money
That's true only until DDoSCoin gets an implementation. Once it does, watch an exchange rate with a better-known cryptocurrency emerge.
The payoff of DDoSCoin happens when the user gets the target system to respond to a web request. This means that so long as the website isn't over-saturated, attackers get paid. Once the site collapses under the DDoS, people stop getting paid. Users would apparently be encouraged to attack the largest sites where bounties are offered. Smaller and less secure sites just aren't worth it because you're identified as part of the attack by your IP address (your 'cost' for the attack), while you're less likely to earn a payoff. And since the payoff for attacking sites that can handle it is a better risk/reward than the payoff for attacking a low-bandwidth site, this scheme perversely encourages unsuccessful DDoS attacks.
What they demonstrated here is that, when you abstract it further, you can reward behaviour that you want with scrip that can then again be used to pay for the same activity being used by you. Now, do we possibly know of some application for that? Well?
C'mon, no file sharer's here?
Now, I am not aware of the more recent development in the area (it's been a while since I torrented a Linux ISO), but back then it was so that you had to allow uploads to be eligible for downloads. Further back, some of you might remember the times of FTP servers with quotas where you had to upload some stuff before you were allowed to download something. This all worked on a per-session base. I.e. if I wanted something now, I had to upload now.
This introduces the possibility of uploading when you have content for "credit".
On a more legal as well as perverted note: Porn. There's plenty of amateur porn sites around that could use such a system. You upload a video and if someone watches, you get store credits to watch other videos with. Of course, anyone not providing content for the porn site has to pay with real cash.
You think this wouldn't take off? Fuck, if I was them I'd patent the living crap out of this!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So if I'm the target of a DDoSCoin attack, I can just make a bunch of fake connection data and get paid more than the miners.
didn't got it... if I use my PC as DDoS, I canreport myself and get e-money? wow! $_$
WTF