After the recent controversy surrounding BitMain and the alleged use of AsicBoost here comes another scandal for the popular ASIC manufacturer. It seems that the company has introduced a backdoor into the firmware of their Bitcoin mining hardware Antminer that allows it to stop miners remotely. Not that they are doing it or will do it at some point, but the ability to do so and control a very large portion of the global mining hashrate is not something that users want. The backdoor is now publicly called and it seems that all recent S9 hardware is affected, and L3, T9 and R4 series hardware are likely to be affected as well.
What is the Antbleed Backdoor:
The firmware checks-in with a central service randomly every 1 to 11 minutes. Each check-in transmits the Antminer serial number, MAC address and IP address. Bitmain can use this check-in data to cross check against customer sales and delivery records making it personally identifiable. The remote service can then return “false” which will stop the miner from mining.
– For more information regarding the Antbleed Backdoor and why it is important…
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