Grief Attack on Bitcoin Testnet Generates Three Years of Blocks in One Week

A mourning attack on the Bitcoin testnet recently caused a spike in network activity, resulting in the generation of more than 165,000 blocks, the equivalent of three years worth of blocks in just one week.

The attacker, Casa co-founder and chief security officer Jameson Lopp, publicly took credit for the incident, to the backlash of other Bitcoin developers.

Lopp defends attack as ‘trivial exploitation’

Speaking on decentralized social media platform Nostr, Lopp described the attack as a “trivial exploit” that only requires 20 lines of code. When asked if the grief attack justified its consequences, Lopp replied that it only cost him $1 worth of electricity.

Lopp defended his actions, arguing that his intent was not malicious but aimed to draw attention to an issue he had previously raised. He stressed that conventional methods, such as communication through development mailing lists, had failed to adequately address the identified weakness.

“People are free to see me as ‘the bad guy,’ but I’m just the first to lean into that weakness,” I’m championing a cause, and sometimes it takes more than just sending an email to call the people’s attention ,” added.

The attack involved flooding the testnet with excessive transactions, spamming the network and dramatically increasing the workload. As a result, the difficulty of the network increased, resulting in the generation of more than 165,000 blocks.

According to data from mempool.space, there has been a significant increase in hash rate and difficulty, peaking at 2,315 TH/s on April 19, before returning to normal levels of around 86 TH/s on April 30 after the attack.

Reaction and opinions

Lopp described the online mourning incident as a “gratuitous stress test,” prompting further backlash from the crypto community. He advocated a reset of Bitcoin’s testnet to address the “timewarp” vulnerability and restore mining rewards, which are currently negligible.

I’ll post an essay next weekend with all the details, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who read my email to the development mailing list several weeks ago.

I suggest you view recent events as a free stress test. Looks like you have room for improvement.

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) April 29, 2024

However, some, like Pouliot, compared Lopp’s actions to vandalism, equating it to defecating in a community hot tub to provoke a move.

We’re all sitting in a jacuzzi at the spa, having a good time. One of us argues that we should move to another spa, the jacuzzi there is better – it has a powerful filter that can keep it clean in case someone decides to poop in the jacuzzi.

We kind of agree in theory, but we were… https://t.co/MIis6yQ8zy

— FRANCIS – BULLBITCOIN.COM (@francispouliot_) April 29, 2024

Pouliot expressed his frustration at the incident, stating that “the only damage that has been done is screwing up the open source Bitcoin app developers’ tests and wasting their time.”

One Bitcoin Talk Thread member dubbed the controversy a “testnet war,” suggesting that people like Lopp should be banned from participating in Bitcoin testnet activities. The member labeled Lopp as a potential threat to the overall security of the Bitcoin network.

Weese commented to X that after the incident, due to the high frequency of new blocks generated every hour, it is impossible to catch up, regardless of the sync speed. He suggested that permissionless test nets might need to be stopped permanently.

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