Transaction Malleability: MtGox's Latest Woes

Was a transaction malleability flaw the true cause of over 750,000 BTC belong to Mt. Gox customers going missing? According to a study conducted by Christian Decker and Roger Wattenhofer of ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), transaction malleability accounted for significantly less loss than Mt. Gox declared - as little as 386 bitcoins. ...while MtGox claimed to have lost 850,000 bitcoins due to malleability attacks, we merely observed a total of 302,000 bitcoins ever being involved in malleability attacks. Of these, only 1,811 bitcoins were in attacks before MtGox stopped....

Mark Karpeles pulling a Cassious Coin from behind the photographer's ear. Solid research has proven what many bitcoiners have long suspected; transaction malleability did not play a significant, if any, role in the disappearance of 850,000 BTC from Japanese exchange Mt. Gox. Christian Decker and Roger Wattenhofer of ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, combed through the blockchain to tally each instance of a potential transaction malleability attack in order to figure out exactly how much Bitcoin was put at risk by the alleged attacks. Their research concludes: The transaction malleability problem....

MtGox is left playing by themselves. Photo via unicefiran. It's not clear as to whether or not MtGox was expecting others to agree with them on transaction malleability, but yesterday's announcement proved they pretty much have zero friends in the Bitcoin world. After releasing their announcement in the morning, it seemed that every other big player in the Bitcoin space decided to basically take Bitcoin's side over MtGox. After all, MtGox was blaming all of their problems on an issue that has been known about for years, so it's not clear what their true intentions were with their press....

The Bitcoin Network Under Attack. If you are involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem at all, in the last 72 hours you have been exposed to the phrase "transaction malleability." It's what Mt Gox blamed when it enacted a sudden and prolonged halting of all withdrawals, and it's the vehicle for what has been called a "massive and concerted attack" on various bitcoin exchanges. Transaction malleability had also been a known characteristic of the Bitcoin protocol for a while, as pointed out by many in the community when Mt Gox cited it as a security liability. Despite all of this tumult within the....

Bitstamp has announced they have a fix for their DDoS problems. Bitstamp has just released a statement about their intentions to resume Bitcoin withdrawals later today. It seems they've been able to implement the transaction malleability fixes created by Bitcoin developers, and they are now ready to fight back against the recent DDoS attacks. As of right now, there is no official word from MtGox on when they will be able to fix their own issues. Could This Stop the Bitcoin Crash? The Bitcoin price has continued to fall over the past few days, although the damage seems to be much more sever....