June 24, 2018 by William Peaster
The anonymous group known as bitPico have declared they’re in the process of bringing thousands of “attack nodes” online in an effort to 51 percent attack Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and create “multiple forks.” Some think it’s all smoke, but the group does have a reputation for stress tests.
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Back in March 2018, a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Bitcoin ’s proposed layer-two scaling solution, the Lightning Network, led to rumors that the “Developers, Miners, and Whales” behind bitPico were responsible . The #bitcoin #LightningNetwork DoS attack/test rumors are true.
We did create a network stress tool for LN. The network is operating out of 8 countries running 22 attack vectors in-parallel from ~384 endpoints.
Don’t trust; Verify.
💰🐳🤓🤓 pic.
twitter.com/hfSHVtQo02
— ɃitPico (@bitPico) April 3, 2018
Within two weeks, bitPico tweeted official responsibility for the attacks, saying the effort was a “test” and the result of the creation of a “network stress tool for LN” — i.e. the anonymous group was submitting the fledgling network to real-world, adversarial conditions to probe its strength.
The group told the press that “as people with investment into bitcoin , we want to make sure layer-two solutions do not get [overwhelmed] out of the gate.”
“If LN can only work if no one tries to attack it, it doesn’t work,” Bitcoin lecturer Andreas Antonopoulos said at the time. “Let’s harden it now, with this free testing.”
Others openly applauded the measure. Not all heroes wear capes! Awesome to see hacking being used for good. @bitPico Thank you for taking a risk in order to push the #Bitcoin Lightning Network closer to mass-adoption.
#bitcoin #hacking #blockchain https://t.co/gLRVaXFTjI
— ForkU (@ForkUOfficial) April 3, 2018
After another few weeks passed, however, bitPico turned their sights to Bitcoin Cash (BCH), saying as much on June 21st. It was then that the group declared their confidence in having the requisite infrastructure to split Bitcoin Cash into “multiple forks” this coming September. We’ve retooled our LN stress testing kit for $bch #bcash @bitcoin Why? It’s time to determine how centralized @rogerkver really is and we are 100% confident we can split the network into multiple forks. Look forward to a 51% attack on the #bitcoin #cash chain this September.
💩
— ɃitPico (@bitPico) June 21, 2018
A day later on June 22nd, bitPico announced the “attack has been started” and that they expected to have 5,000 “attack nodes” running within a few weeks.
The group also said Roger Ver, Bitcoin.com owner and lightning rod Bitcoin Cash supporter, “will cry” accordingly: The #bcash $bch @bitcoin attack has been started; it will continue to run as we work to amplify it over the coming months. We expect to have 5000 Bcash attack nodes in roughly 6 weeks and then we will multi-fork the chain. @rogerkver will now cry 😭. #hacking #skills #security pic.twitter.com/dR8ksy6Lz8
— ɃitPico (@bitPico) June 22, 2018
Shortly thereafter, bitPico said their latest stress test tool was ready for “botnet deployment”:
— ɃitPico (@bitPico) June 23, 2018 Into the Maw
Whereas bitPico cast its Lightning Network DDoS attacks as benevolent, the group’s remarks on its Bitcoin Cash endeavors have been more openly adversarial.
I’ve asked the group for clarification as to their precise end-game and will update this article accordingly if they choose to comment. From their public remarks, it’s clear in the very least that they’re gunning for 51 percent attacks against BCH — considerable flexes if they can be actualized. Indeed, “consensus failure” is nothing for any crypto project to sneeze at.
Remember this is stage 1 of a 6 stage network test operation.
Over the next 3 months the intensity will increase every week until we mine 32MB blocks and go for a chain rewind via latency induced consensus failure. We have our own C++ bitcoin impl retooled for #bcash consensus.
— ɃitPico (@bitPico) June 23, 2018
The group has even proposed how to attack BCH zero-confirmation transactions, saying the crypto’s proponents don’t understand “how easy it is to bring their network down”: We can just mine the transaction ourselves and drop the merchants zero-conf Tx from our stratum backed mempool. We don’t think the #bcash $bch people understand how easy it is to bring their network down.
🙈
— ɃitPico (@bitPico) June 23, 2018
Interestingly, the group’s aforementioned 6-week timeline would see their project hitting stride just two weeks shy of the Bitcoin Cash community’s unrelated September 1st BCH Stress Test Day — a whitehat “community-driven stress test of the Bitcoin Cash network and its services.” Whether bitPico lined such up on purpose is unclear, though the group is at least aware of the campaign .
On Saturday, June 23rd, bitPico said it had received death threats, though it also wasn’t clear if these threats were related to the group’s BCH attack nodes. We have received a few death threats; that ends today. If you have a problem with us come visit our facility and stop hiding behind your computer like a child.
#bitcoin #selfdefense pic.twitter.com/jQ10dzHVTA
The group, who has now published the first stage of their BCH network test toolkit on GitHub , is no stranger to controversy. Last year as the SegWit2x debates boiled over, bitPico said they’d be continuing the fork until support disintegrated. At the time, the group claimed of having “30% [of Bitcoin’s] network hash-rate.
” Bitcoin Cash Devs Respond
I reached out to several Bitcoin Cash developers for comment on bitPico’s latest effort, and Bitcoin ABC’s Amaury Sechet and Bitcoin Unlimited’s Antony Zeger were among those who got back to me.
Sechet said it was “hard to answer” what the group’s larger goal was. “I think [they hope] to split the network by creating many nodes,” Sechet said, though, again, we can only presume the why until bitPico definitively says what they’re hoping to accomplish before they call the dogs off, as it were. Twitter .
