Red Alert! supercomputing Is Back!

alphabeta (56) in steemit • 8 years ago (edited)

Exactly one week after the Hardfork, supercomputing aka gxt-1080-sc is back.
This time, he is changing the computation of the nonce. He may be using a short cut or a GPU miner.
Unfortunately, I can not upload any images to steemimg site at the moment, so I can not provide images to show the different between his and a regular miner.
But, anyone could take a look at supercomputing's miner and compare to your own. as you can see the different is the nonce.
On @arhag' post. He has pointed out the original exploit and the vulnerability of the fixed.
The new mining algorithm (as of hardfork v0.13) and step 1 is about the nonce.

1) d         = SHA256(miner_account_name || latest_block_id || nonce)

Clearly, supercomputing has managed to find a short cut to his advantage again. Hat's off to him. (Edit: for his finding not for his mining)
*Edit to removed the hat's off image.
As of right now. He already added 50 miners. He will take over the miner queue again very soon. :(

UPDATE:

Thanks @arhag for his comment.

Here is his comment from below:

I've explained the likely reason for that in the #mining channel on steemit.chat.From what I've seen, my only conclusion is that he is most likely not using an exploit, but rather using his own more efficient custom implementation of the miner. If we take his account name at face value, it likely means that he has built a GPU miner.
.

steemit steem mining bots help

8 years ago by alphabeta (56)

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15 votes

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willbeonceagain8 (50) · 8 years ago

What a selfish greedy f*****g w****r . Don't know what all this hats off is all about ! wont go into what i feel like doing to that little t**t round about now. Hes destroying the mining game for the rest off us !!!

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1 vote

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago (edited)

@willbeonceagain8,
I don't like him to screw other miners as well.
My hat's off to him because he found the vulnerability of the algorithms. But, He should point it out to the dev and collect his bounty instead taken advantage of it.

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1 vote

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melek (57) · 8 years ago

Yes, point it out and be a good player. I finally got my mining working well last week.

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1 vote

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

We all got one good week of mining. Sad to see him taken over again. :(

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1 vote

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melek (57) · 8 years ago (edited)

Wish i had a good server to setup as a witness... probably to late to be successful at that.

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1 vote

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profitgenerator (68) · 8 years ago

Damn, some people just dont give up to make a quick buck don't they?

Well maybe we need more honest miners to outgrow him and his hash power.

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letc (59) · 8 years ago

I would not call that a quick buck. It probably took a very good knowledge in EC cryptography and some research effort to find this short cut (if he really found one).

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1 vote

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

@letc,
Agreed.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

If he found a short cut, there is no way except to exploit the same short cut to beat him.
If he has a GPU miner than hat's off to him, he is the only one who has it. No one could beat him.

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago

@alpha I'm guessing it's a GPU miner if the name is GTX-1080. That, or he loves his new nvidia card so much he named the accounts after it.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

@alifton,
I noticed the name change before and make a post about it.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@alphabeta/supercomputing-is-now-gxt-1080-sc

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago

No amount of CPU mining will beat a GPU. I promise you unless you have access to like 1k+ cores to work with. That's why GPU mining is so much better, faster and efficient. CPU's are number crunching machines and everything is onboard the card so no bottle-necking just pure unadulterated computational work.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

As I point out, his nonce computation is different. It is possible that he might have a GPU miner.

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago (edited)

I really didn't want to start tearing apart source tonight but there goes the evening, and on goes the coffee. I just finished optimizing my stupid CPU miner to hit about 7 or 8 blocks a day but if no one gives a crap out playing fair then it's so on...

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

This is the quote from @arhag's post about the new algorithm.

So the real solution is to simply get rid of the degree of freedom provided when the system allows the user to arbitrarily choose the private key d (or at least the system should allow no more of a degree of freedom than that allowed by iterating a nonce or account name which changes the pseudorandom cryptographic hash output that is used as the private key). So the private key d should instead be deterministically determined by a cryptographic hash dependent on the latest_block_id, miner_account_name (this is to necessary to prevent the PoW from being stolen by another account within the same block), and the nonce. input should also depend on those three values, so it can simply be defined as the SHA256 cryptographic hash of the private key d. The rest of the algorithm is more or less kept the same.

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fubar-bdhr (68) · 8 years ago

They need to fork out his rewards too or he will just keep finding exploits.

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago

No... Please... No bailout fork, just fix it. Otherwise we have a whole new Steem and Steem Classic mess on our hands like Ethereum.

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2 votes

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

@alifton,
Agreed.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

Well, @dan needs to rewrite his algorithms, a more secure one.
Maybe dev should pay him a bounty and tell him not to mine.

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago

This is what happens when people decide to make their own algorithm and don't leave it up to peer review. We all saw what happened with the DAO exploit. lol Getting down and dirty with the quick code rarely works out well. For every good coder in the world there's usually a much better one who remains anonymous until they launch their 0-day exploit.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

@alifton,
Agreed. Yet, this is the best CPU mining algorithm out there(IMO).
This algorithm still new. It will take time for them find all the bugs.

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago (edited)

It's not that new but once you make it open source like it is, someone will find a way to 0-day the crap out of it. There's loads of people who make their whole living using, finding and selling 0-day exploits.

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letc (59) · 8 years ago (edited)

Do you have a proof that he is really using an exploit? And even if he does, he is still playing by the rules as he is calculating POW numbers that satisfy the set criteria (even if he found a different method for it). Finding more efficient ways of computing POWs is really a part of the competition.

And there is no danger for Steem in this as most blocks are generated by non-miner witnesses. Miners can not generate more that 1 block in 63 seconds and can not earn more than one top 19 witness. Supercomputing will not be able to crash the market the way it was feared about the DAO attacker.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

I have no proof. The only thing I noticed is that his POW nonce is different from everyone else.
I am speculating that either he found a short cut or he has a GPU miner.
Danger or not, it is not good to have one miner controls the miner queue(IMO).

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arhag (67) · 8 years ago

I have no proof. The only thing I noticed is that his POW nonce is different from everyone else.

I've explained the likely reason for that in the #mining channel on steemit.chat.

From what I've seen, my only conclusion is that he is most likely not using an exploit, but rather using his own more efficient custom implementation of the miner. If we take his account name at face value, it likely means that he has built a GPU miner.

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2 votes

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

@arhag,
Thank you for your answer. I guess it is pretty certain that he has a GPU miner.

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letc (59) · 8 years ago (edited)

Agreed. What I am talking about is that there is no need nor justification for forking out the rewards (was answering to @fubar-bdhr).

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

I see.

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fubar-bdhr (68) · 8 years ago

He is using multiple accounts so he can generate a block every 3 seconds.

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letc (59) · 8 years ago

No, only one in every 21 blocks is generated by any miner, that is 1 block in 63 seconds.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

@fubar-bdhr,
I meant one person.

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago

I was checking the cue a little bit ago and saw the same thing. Either he loves his new GTX-1080 or is GPU mining. It was only a matter of time but for crying out loud.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

I noticed it this morning. He has been adding miners few at a time all day.
The way he mines definitely not CPU power.

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago

Yeah, I'm guessing it's most definitely not a CPU. Or a single CPU setup anyway. I swear if this keeps up I'm taking over the college lab on Saturday, or sooner and installing the software on every machine in the Comp-Sci dept.

I'll be hilarious until someone gets fired anyway...

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago

Wow checking the cue, @dan is already running a version of HF14?

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

He has it running for a few days already.

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alifton (50) · 8 years ago (edited)

Yeah I saw but it was only a few in the cue so I didn't care much until I saw he's all but taken over the cue again. I noticed when my re-optimized CPU version of steemd went from a block every couple hours to twice that and it's only been getting worse as the day goes on. I'm so sick of this stupid waste of electricity on BS.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago

I know how you feel.
Hey, would you mind share info on your optimized version of steemd.
Right now I am using @bitcube's window version of steemd.

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leprechaun (56) · 8 years ago

Such an important post and only 0.12 cents. Setting up a mining rig is a pain. The old tutorials are out of date. It seems to be unprofitable unless you have a GPU and the software needed. Soon as before we will have one person in control of the block chain. He can censor posts (including this one) or censor certain users. He also censor votes for posts that contain the words 'mining' for example.

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alphabeta (56) · 8 years ago (edited)

Well, It is sad that the community does not value mining posts.
With supercomputing's power, it is not profitable to mine anymore, maybe just for fun. Even more so when reward cut in half at block 8600000(in a few more months).

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