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The Ethereum network is currently undergoing a DoS attack

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Jeffrey Wilcke


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The Ethereum network is currently undergoing a DoS attack

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URGENT ALL MINERS: The network is under attack. The attack is a computational DDoS, ie. miners and nodes need to spend a very long time processing some blocks. This is due to the EXTCODESIZE opcode, which has a fairly low gasprice but which requires nodes to read state information from disk; the attack transactions are calling this opcode roughly 50,000 times per block. The consequence of this is that the network is greatly slowing down, but there is NO consensus failure or memory overload. We have currently identified several routes for a more sustainable medium-term fix and have developers working on implementation.

It is highly reccomended to switch to Parity mining. Use these settings:

--cache-size-db 1024 --gas-floor-target 1000000 --gasprice 50000000000

Parity mining guides:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j3v8bKjXQcMNNdx5Juwo3PRRCcHy8XcA6R9-0W7NCso/edit
https://github.com/ethcore/parity/wiki/Mining
If you continue to use geth, use the following settings:

--cache 1024 --targetgaslimit 1000000 --gasprice 50000000000

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Jeffrey Wilcke

  • evily

    Good luck. There is a billion dollar market cap on the line.

    • Don’t you worry, it will be fixed soon. It is unlikely to affect the market. Some may dump but it will soon recover.

  • Thorsten Hirsch

    When copy&pasting your recommended parameters I get a special character http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2013/index.htm instead of the 2 dashes. I guess your blogging software is to blame.

    • David Hantson

      lets see if we can get the correct statements in comment then:

      Parity
      –cache-size-db 1024 –gas-floor-target 1000000 –gasprice 500000000000

      Geth
      –cache 1024 –targetgaslimit 1000000 –gasprice 50000000000

  • Brian Swanson

    So, I just pool mined my 1st ever ETH this morning via ethermine.org. Took 34 hours to mine it at 148 MH/s…and now this DoS attack has occurred. Assuming it is fine to keep my miner running or should I shut it down? I am currently at work. Thanks. -Brian

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