A mischievous hacker made a bold and brazen promise. He has stated that he will be attacking 51% of the cryptocurrency Einsteinium. The attacker promised that he would demonstrate how easy it is to attack the major hashrate of altcoins. The entire process will take place on the 12th of October at 3:00 CDT. They not only promised to attack altcoins but they also vowed to live stream the entire process.

Attacking 51% of Altcoins has become a Spectator Sport

The attackers will gain control on the majority of the cryptocurrency’s hashrate which is beneficial as they would be able to double spend the transactions fraudulently. The same thing happened thrice this year and became a motif in 2018. In the last three months, Bitcoin Gold and Verge were attacked, the former was attacked once whereas the latter was attacked twice. Now warnings have been made stating that they are going to attack another cryptocurrency that is based on the script- Einsteinium (EC2).

The complete details of the attack were revealed by an entity named ‘piracy1’. There are two main reasons behind the live streaming of this attack, namely to demonstrate how easily one can attack these cryptocurrencies and to bring awareness about the nuts and bolts of the potential mitigations and attacks. Interested parties can access the live stream link on October 13th at 4 am.

Altcoin Low Hashrate is the Reason for the Attacks

Einsteinium is the third-worst performer of the year as its value was decreased by 97%. It has a low hashrate, and this is the main reason why it became prone to the malicious attacks. The monetary benefit that the hackers will be getting by attacking the 551% of Einsteinium is nearly negligible, and they won’t even be able to try the double-spend either. On top of that, they should be paying for renting the hashrate to complete the attack.

They explained, “I am donating $50 of my money and you are welcome to donate as much as you can if you want to”. Script-based cryptocurrencies are easy to attack and they can be hacked for an hour by renting a hashrate for $22.