Anonymous Twitter User Says They'll Livestream a 51 Percent Altcoin Attack

A Twitter user by the handle GeoCold posted a tweet on Oct. 7 announcing their intention to wage a 51 percent attack against altcoin Einsteinium and live-stream the entire event on Twitch.

Demonstrate how easy these attacks are for anyone to do, and.

Generally, teach people about the nuts and bolts of these attacks and potential mitigations.

Oct 13, 3:00 CDT I'm doing 51% attacks against real live CryptoCurrencies and explaining the whole process on twitch.

Co/JQm34LrvhW. - GeoCold October 8, 2018.What is a 51 Percent Attack?A 51 percent attack occurs when, as the name suggests, an outside user assumes majority control of a targeted blockchain.

In a 51 percent attack, a miner can take advantage of that by using greater than half of the blockchain network's hashing power to send funds to an address on the main blockchain while secretly sending the same funds to an address on a forked copy of that chain.

While bigger coins would take a lot of money to attack because taking over their network would require an incredible amount of computing power, some altcoins like Einsteinium can be attacked for cheap.

GeoCold is planning to conduct their attack with $50 USD.Why is this important?51 percent attacks have become increasingly common in 2018, some focusing on higher profile altcoins like Bitcoin Gold and Verge.

One commenter on GeoCold's post said 51 percent attacks against small blockchains is "Like taking candy from a toddler." So why do it at all?

Amid fears of hacking, scams, and vanishing crypto funds fueled by reports of recent attacks, it makes sense to err on the side of caution.