Michael x bitcoin bot net
Many thousands of articles have been written purporting to explain Bitcoin, the online, peer-to-peer currency. Most michael x bitcoin bot net those articles give a hand-wavy account of the underlying cryptographic protocol, omitting many details. Even those articles which delve deeper often gloss over crucial points. My aim in this post is to explain the major ideas behind the Bitcoin protocol in a clear, easily comprehensible way. Understanding the protocol in this detailed michael x bitcoin bot net is hard work.
It is tempting instead to take Bitcoin as given, and to engage in speculation about how to get rich with Bitcoin, whether Bitcoin is a bubble, whether Bitcoin might one day mean the end of taxation, and so on. Understanding the details of the Bitcoin protocol opens up otherwise inaccessible vistas. New financial instruments can, in turn, be used to create new markets and to enable new forms of collective human behaviour. This post concentrates on explaining the nuts-and-bolts of the Bitcoin protocol.
To understand the post, you need to be comfortable with public key cryptographyand with the closely related idea of digital signatures.
None of this is especially difficult. The basic ideas can be taught in freshman university mathematics or computer science classes. In the world of atoms we achieve security with devices such as locks, safes, signatures, and bank vaults. In the world of bits we achieve this kind of security with cryptography. My strategy in the post is to build Bitcoin up in stages. We will have reinvented Bitcoin! This strategy is slower than if I explained the entire Bitcoin protocol in one shot.
But while you can understand the mechanics of Bitcoin through such a one-shot explanation, it would be difficult to understand why Bitcoin is designed the way it is. The advantage of the slower iterative explanation is that it gives us a much sharper michael x bitcoin bot net of each element of Bitcoin.
You may find these interesting, but you can also skip them entirely without losing track of the main text. On the face of it, a digital currency sounds impossible.
If Alice can use a string of bits as money, how can we prevent her from using the same bit string over and over, thus minting an infinite supply michael x bitcoin bot net money? Or, if we can somehow solve that problem, how can we prevent someone else forging such a string of bits, and using that to michael x bitcoin bot net from Alice?
These are just michael x bitcoin bot net of the many problems that must be overcome in order to use information as money. Suppose Alice wants to give another person, Michael x bitcoin bot net, an infocoin. She then digitally signs the message using a private cryptographic key, and announces the signed string of bits to the entire world. A similar useage is common, though not universal, in the Bitcoin world. But it does have michael x bitcoin bot net virtues.
So the protocol establishes that Alice truly intends to give Bob one infocoin. The same fact — no-one else could compose such a signed message — also gives Alice some limited protection from forgery. To make this explicit: Later protocols will be similar, in that all our forms of digital money will be just more and more elaborate messages [1]. A problem with the first version of Infocoin is that Alice could keep sending Bob the same signed message over and over.
Does that mean Alice sent Bob ten different infocoins? Was her message accidentally duplicated? Perhaps she was trying to trick Bob into believing that she had given him ten different infocoins, michael x bitcoin bot net the message only proves to the world that she intends to transfer one infocoin.
They need a label or serial number. To make this scheme work we need a trusted source of serial numbers for the infocoins. One way to create such a source is to introduce a bank. This bank would provide serial numbers for infocoins, keep track of who has which infocoins, and verify that transactions really are legitimate. Instead, he contacts the bank, and verifies that: This last solution looks pretty promising. However, it turns out that we can do something much more ambitious.
We can eliminate the bank entirely from the protocol. This changes the nature of the currency considerably. It means that there is no longer any single organization in charge of the currency.
The idea is to make it so everyone collectively is the bank. You can think of this as a shared public ledger showing all Infocoin transactions.
Now, suppose Alice wants to transfer an infocoin to Bob. A more challenging problem is that this protocol allows Alice to cheat by double spending her infocoin. And so they will both accept the transaction, and also broadcast their acceptance of the transaction.
How should other people update their block chains? There may be no easy way to achieve a consistent shared ledger of transactions. And even if everyone can agree on a consistent way to update their block chains, there is still the problem that either Bob or Charlie will be cheated.
At first glance double spending seems difficult for Alice to pull off. After all, if Alice sends the message first to Bob, then Bob can verify the message, and tell everyone else in the network including Charlie to update their block chain.
Once that has happened, Charlie would no longer be fooled by Alice. So there is most likely only a brief period of time in which Alice can double spend. Worse, there are techniques Alice could use to make that period longer. She could, for example, use network traffic analysis to find times when Bob and Charlie are likely to have a lot of latency in communication. Or perhaps she could do something to deliberately disrupt their communications. If she can slow communication even a little that makes her task of double spending much easier.
How can we address the problem of double spending? Rather, he should broadcast the possible transaction to the michael x bitcoin bot net network of Infocoin users, and ask them to help determine whether the transaction is legitimate.
If they collectively decide that the transaction is okay, then Bob can accept the infocoin, and everyone will update their block chain. Also as before, Bob does a sanity check, using his copy of the block chain to check that, indeed, the coin currently belongs to Alice.
But at that point the protocol is modified. Other members of the network check to see whether Alice owns that infocoin. This protocol has many imprecise elements at present. Fixing that problem will at the same time have the pleasant side effect of making the ideas above much more precise. Suppose Alice wants to double spend in the network-based protocol I just described. She could do this by taking over the Infocoin network.
As before, she michael x bitcoin bot net to double spend the same infocoin with both Bob and Charlie. The idea is counterintuitive and involves a combination of two ideas: The benefit of making it costly to validate transactions is that validation can no longer michael x bitcoin bot net influenced by the number of network identities someone controls, but only by the total computational power they can bring to bear on validation.
But to really understand proof-of-work, we need to go through the details. For instance, another network user named David might have the following queue of pending transactions:.
David checks his copy of the block chain, and can see that each transaction is valid. He would like to help out by broadcasting news of that validity to the entire network. However, before doing that, as part of the validation protocol David is required to solve a hard computational puzzle — the proof-of-work.
What puzzle does David need to solve? Bitcoin uses the well-known SHA hash function, but any cryptographically secure hash function will do. Suppose David appends a number called the nonce to and hashes the combination. The puzzle David has to solve — the proof-of-work — is to find a nonce such that when we append to and hash the combination the output hash begins with a long run of zeroes.
The puzzle can be made more or less difficult by varying the number of zeroes required to solve the puzzle. A relatively simple proof-of-work puzzle might require just three or four zeroes at the start of the hash, while a more difficult proof-of-work puzzle might require a much longer run of zeros, say 15 consecutive zeroes.
We can keep trying different values for the nonce. Finally, at we obtain:. This michael x bitcoin bot net gives us a string of four zeroes at the beginning of the output of the hash. This will be enough to solve a simple proof-of-work puzzle, but not enough to solve a more difficult proof-of-work puzzle.
What makes this puzzle hard to solve is the fact that the output from a cryptographic hash function behaves like a random number: So if we want the output hash value to begin with 10 michael x bitcoin bot net, say, then David will need, on average, to try different values for before he finds a suitable nonce.
In fact, the Bitcoin protocol gets quite a fine level of control over the difficulty of the puzzle, by using a slight variation on the proof-of-work puzzle described above.
This target is automatically adjusted to ensure that a Bitcoin block takes, on average, about ten minutes to validate. In practice there is a sizeable randomness in how long it takes to validate a block — sometimes a new block is validated in just a minute or two, other times it may take 20 minutes or even longer.
Instead of solving a single puzzle, we can require that multiple puzzles be solved; with some careful design it is possible to considerably reduce the variance in the time to validate a block of transactions. Other participants in the Infocoin network can verify that is a valid solution to the proof-of-work puzzle. And they then update their block chains to include the new block of transactions. For the proof-of-work idea to have any chance of succeeding, network users need an incentive to help validate transactions.
A botnet is a number of Internet -connected devices, each of which is running one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform distributed denial-of-service michael x bitcoin bot net DDoS attacksteal data, [1] send spam, and allows the attacker to access the device and its connection.
The term is usually used with a negative or malicious connotation. A botnet is a logical collection of internet-connected devices such as computers, smartphones or IoT devices whose security has been breached and control ceded to a third party. Each such compromised device, known as a "bot", is created when a device is penetrated by software from a malware malicious software distribution. The controller of a botnet is able to direct the activities of these compromised computers through communication channels formed by standards-based network protocols such as IRC and Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP.
Botnets are increasingly rented out by cyber criminals as commodities michael x bitcoin bot net a variety of purposes. Botnet architecture has evolved over time in an effort to evade detection and disruption. Traditionally, bot programs are constructed as clients which communicate via existing servers.
This allows the bot herder the person controlling the botnet to perform all control from a remote location, which michael x bitcoin bot net their traffic. These P2P bot programs perform the same actions as the client-server model, but they michael x bitcoin bot net not require a central server to communicate.
The first botnets on the internet used a client-server model to accomplish their tasks. Typically, these botnets operate through Internet Relay Chat networks, domains, or websites.
Infected clients access a predetermined location and await incoming commands from the server. The bot herder sends commands to the server, which relays them to the clients. Clients execute the commands and report their results back to the bot herder. The michael x bitcoin bot net herder sends commands to the channel via the IRC server.
Each client retrieves the commands and executes them. Clients send messages back to the IRC channel with the results of their actions. In response to efforts to detect and decapitate IRC botnets, bot herders have begun deploying malware on peer-to-peer networks. These bots may use digital signatures so that only someone with access to the private key can control the botnet.
Gameover ZeuS and ZeroAccess botnet. Newer botnets fully operate over P2P networks. Rather than communicate with a centralized server, P2P bots perform as both a command distribution server and a client which receives commands. In order to find other infected machines, the bot discreetly probes random Michael x bitcoin bot net addresses until it contacts another infected machine. The contacted bot replies with information such as its software version and list of known bots.
If one of the bots' version is lower than the other, they will initiate a file transfer to update. A botnet's originator known as a " bot herder " or "bot master" controls the botnet remotely. The program for the operation which must communicate via a covert channel to the client on the victim's machine zombie computer. A bot herder creates an IRC channel for infected clients to join. Messages sent to the channel are broadcast to all channel members.
The bot herder may set the channel's topic to command the botnet. Some botnets implement custom versions of well-known protocols. The implementation differences can be used for detection of botnets.
In computer science, a zombie computer is a computer connected to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, computer virus or trojan horse and can be used to perform malicious tasks of one sort or another under remote direction.
Botnets of zombie computers are often used to spread e-mail spam and launch denial-of-service attacks. Most owners of zombie computers are unaware that their system is being used in this way.
Because the owner tends michael x bitcoin bot net be unaware, these computers are metaphorically compared to zombies.
A coordinated DDoS attack by multiple botnet machines also resembles a zombie horde attack. Many computer users are unaware that their computer is infected with bots. The process of stealing computing resources as a result of michael x bitcoin bot net system being joined to a "botnet" is sometimes referred to as "scrumping. Bots are added to the botnet by using a scanning script, the scanning script is run on an external server and scans IP ranges for telnet and SSH server default logins.
Once a login is found it is added to an infection list and infected with a malicious infection line via SSH on michael x bitcoin bot net the scanner server. When the SSH command is run it infects the server and commands the server to ping to the control server and becomes its slave from the malicious code infecting it. These types of botnets were used to take down large websites like Xbox and PlayStation network by a known hacking group called Lizard Squad.
IRC networks use simple, low bandwidth communication methods, making them widely used to host botnets. They tend to be relatively simple michael x bitcoin bot net construction and have been used with moderate success for coordinating DDoS attacks and spam campaigns while being able to continually switch channels to avoid being taken down.
However, in some cases, the mere blocking of certain keywords has proven effective in stopping IRC-based botnets. One problem with using IRC is that each bot client must know the IRC server, port, and channel to be of any use to the botnet. Anti-malware organizations can detect and shut down these servers and channels, effectively halting the botnet attack. If this happens, clients are still infected, but they typically lie dormant since they have no way of receiving instructions.
If one of the servers or michael x bitcoin bot net becomes disabled, the botnet simply switches to another. It is still possible to detect and disrupt additional botnet servers or channels by sniffing IRC traffic. A botnet adversary can even potentially gain knowledge of the control scheme and imitate the bot herder by issuing commands correctly.
Some have also used encryption as a way to secure or lock down the botnet from others, most of the time when they use encryption it is public-key cryptography and has presented challenges in both implementing it and breaking it. Many large botnets tend to use domains rather than IRC in their construction see Rustock botnet and Srizbi botnet.
They are michael x bitcoin bot net hosted with bulletproof hosting services. A zombie computer accesses a specially-designed webpage or domain s which serves the list of controlling commands.
Disadvantages of michael x bitcoin bot net this method are that it uses a considerable amount of bandwidth at large scale, and domains can be quickly seized by government agencies without much trouble or effort. If the domains controlling the botnets are not seized, they are also easy targets to compromise with denial-of-service attacks. Fast-flux DNS can be used as a way to make it difficult to track down the control servers, which may change from day to day.
While these free DNS services do not themselves host attacks, they provide reference points often hard-coded into the botnet executable. Removing such services can cripple an entire botnet. Newer bots can automatically scan their environment and propagate themselves using vulnerabilities and weak passwords.
Generally, the more vulnerabilities a bot can scan and propagate through, the more valuable it becomes to a botnet controller community. Computers can be co-opted into a botnet when they execute malicious software. This can be accomplished by luring users into making a drive-by downloadexploiting web browser vulnerabilitiesor by tricking the user into running a Trojan horse program, which may come from an email attachment. This malware will typically install modules that allow the computer to be commanded and controlled by the botnet's operator.
After the software is downloaded, it will call home send a reconnection packet to the host computer. When the re-connection is made, depending on how it is written, a Trojan may then delete itself or may remain present to update and maintain the modules. In some cases, a botnet may be temporarily created by volunteer hacktivistssuch as with implementations of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon as used by 4chan members during Project Chanology in China's Great Cannon of China allows the modification of legitimate web browsing traffic at internet backbones into China to create a large ephemeral botnet to attack large targets such as GitHub in The botnet controller community features a constant and continuous struggle over who has the most michael x bitcoin bot net, the highest overall bandwidth, and the most "high-quality" infected machines, like university, corporate, and even government machines.
While botnets are often named after the malware that created them, multiple botnets typically use the same malware but are operated by different entities. Host-based techniques use heuristics to identify bot behavior that has bypassed conventional anti-virus software. BotHunter is software, developed with support from the U.
Army Research Officethat detects botnet activity within a network by analyzing network traffic and comparing it to patterns characteristic of malicious processes. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are analyzing botnets' behavior by simultaneously running one million Linux kernels—a similar scale to a botnet—as virtual machines on a 4,node high-performance computer cluster to emulate a very large network, allowing them to watch how botnets work and experiment with michael x bitcoin bot net to stop them.
One thing that's becoming more apparent is the fact that detecting automated bot attacks is becoming more difficult each day as newer and more sophisticated generations of bots are getting launched by attackers. For example, an automated attack can deploy a large bot army and apply brute-force methods with highly accurate username and password lists to hack into accounts.
The idea is to overwhelm sites with tens of thousands of requests from different IPs all over the world, but with each bot only submitting a single request every 10 minutes or so, which can result in more than 5 million attempts per day. One of the techniques for detecting these bot attacks is what's known as "signature-based systems" in which the software will attempt to detect patterns in the request packet.
But attacks are constantly evolving, so this may not be a viable option when patterns can't be discerned from thousands of requests. There's also the behavioral michael x bitcoin bot net to thwarting bots, which ultimately is trying distinguish bots from humans. By identifying non-human behavior and recognizing known bot behavior, this process can be applied at the user, browser, and network levels.
The first botnet was first acknowledged and exposed by Earthlink during a lawsuit with notorious spammer Khan C. Aroundto thwart detection, some botnets were scaling back in size. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Future of Botnets in the Internet of Things". Retrieved michael x bitcoin bot net July Retrieved 9 June Retrieved 12 November Retrieved 28 June Handbook of Information and Communication Security. Uses authors parameter link CS1 maint: Retrieved 2 September Retrieved 27 May Russian hackers target the cloud, Twitter, GitHub in malware spread".
Retrieved 7 October
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