According to CryptoPotato, a griefing attack on the Bitcoin testnet recently led to a significant surge in network activity, generating over 165,000 blocks, equivalent to three years’ worth of blocks, in just one week. The attacker, Jameson Lopp, co-founder and Chief Security Officer of Casa, publicly acknowledged his role in the incident, which sparked criticism from other Bitcoin developers. Lopp defended the attack as a 'trivial exploit' that required only 20 lines of code and cost him just $1 in electricity. He argued that his intent was not malicious but to draw attention to a weakness he had previously identified and felt was not being adequately addressed through conventional communication methods.
The attack involved flooding the testnet with excessive transactions, spamming the network, and significantly increasing the workload. This led to a spike in network difficulty and the generation of over 165,000 blocks. Data from mempool.space showed 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 by April 30.
Lopp's description of the incident as a 'free stress test' prompted further backlash from the crypto community. He advocated for a reset of Bitcoin’s testnet to address the 'timewarp' vulnerability and restore mining rewards. However, some likened Lopp’s actions to vandalism. Francis Pouliot, for instance, compared it to defecating in a communal jacuzzi to prompt a relocation. He expressed frustration at the incident, stating that it interfered with the tests of open-source Bitcoin application builders and wasted their time. A member of the Bitcoin Talk Thread referred to the controversy as a 'testnet war' and suggested that individuals like Lopp should be banned from participating in Bitcoin’s testnet activities. He labeled Lopp as a potential threat to the overall security of the Bitcoin network.
