THELOGICALINDIAN - There accept been contempo allegations thatBitmain can shut bottomward all of its Antminer mining accouterments accidentally This declared backdoor vulnerability has been dubbed Antbleed and can be beheld via curve of cipher onGithub and Pastebin The website antbleedcom was createdapparently to explain the vulnerability to the public
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According to the website, the action of shutting bottomward the mining accouterments is able back Antminer firmware connects with the centralized account every 1 to 11 minutes. The Antbleed website antiseptic what happens back the miner connects with the axial server,
The Antbleed website authors claimed the vulnerability could acquiesce for the accumulation abeyance of miners worldwide, accidental to a accident of about 70% of the hashing power. They mentioned this vulnerability could acquiesce Bitmain or government admiral to agitate or ambition specific miners.
They additionally appropriate that alike if Bitmain is not actuality malicious, the API is non-authenticated and could account adverse problems in the accident of a annex or hack. This would additionally abeyance Antminers on a all-around scale.
However, the Bitcoin developer Sergio Demian Lerner did not see the botheration as that cogent or devastating. He tweeted that it’s not necessarily accommodating anyway, depending on the code. According to his tweet, the way the cipher is set up does not acquiesce for accessible hacking or backdoor usage.
Bitmain’s Blog Response to Accusations
In a account post, Bitmain additionally alone claims that their “Antbleed” cipher is malicious. They alleged it accessible antecedent and accessible for all to see. It was not advised to be nefarious. It was alone declared to be a feature. Bitmain said they meant for this affection to acquiesce barter to accept admission to shutting off their miners in case they were baseborn or put into use by others. They alike cited some statistics about back miners were withheld or baseborn by others:
They went on to accompaniment that the affection was implemented to accommodate law administration with added tracking advice if miners were absolutely stolen. Their column said they never planned on arbitrarily shutting off anyone’s mining accessories after able accord or authorization. The aggregation compared their affection to Smartphone auto abolish or alien abeyance functionality.
Bitmain also admits they never completed the auto abeyance affection on their blog post. They said it was started back they began development on Antminer S7, and capital to accomplishment it on the S9. The activity came to a arrest due to abstruse difficulties. They claimed the extra cipher is alone a bug—and accumulated with the ascent agitation in the bitcoin community—it has acquired accumulation confounding based on old grudges.
Bitmain Offers Solution to Vulnerability
Nonetheless, Bitmain bound offered a band-aid to the “bug.” They said, “we accept appear the new adapted source-code on GitHub and new firmware on our website which removes this bug.” Bitmain appropriate that all Antiminer owners advancement their software to an adapted account provided in their blog article. They additionally brash no one to download any “firmware” from third-party contributors, because it could advance to problems with accouterments activity and be susceptible to attacks from hackers.
Do you anticipate “Antbleed” is a bent vulnerability or an adventitious bug? Let us apperceive in the comments below.
Images via Shutterstock and Bitmain.com
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