Hacker breaks into Bitcoin test network for just $ 1

Jameson Lopp, co-founder of the self-storage platform Casa, attacked the Bitcoin test network, which caused dissatisfaction among developers.

As a result of the incident, more than 165,000 blocks were generated. This is equivalent to about three years of activity on the flagship cryptocurrency’s network. Lopp needed only 20 lines of code and $ 1 to disrupt the blockchain’s functioning.

According to experts, Jameson Lopp carried out a «gopher attack». In the context of network operations, it involves creating a huge number of transactions to overload the system.

In general, attacks on test networks usually do not bring direct financial benefits to the attacker. The impact on users is also not significant.

Lopp wanted to point out a vulnerability in the BTC testnet infrastructure. In particular, the timewarp issue. When exploiting this bug, an attacker manipulates the time of block creation.