Good Morning, Bitcoin - Wednesday, September 4th, 2024

GM! It is Wednesday, September 4th, 2024, and if you're looking to get irrationally angry about something trivial and waste a couple of productive hours, you're in the wrong place. Here's your daily No Bullshit GM report.

What's new

• Hashrate go up. The Bitcoin network's hashrate has recently reached new highs, peaking at 740 exahashes per second (EH/s).
• 'Opt-in' Chat Control blitz in EU. The EU Council may soon endorse a controversial draft law on chat control, previously delayed after protests. According to a report by Contexte, the Hungarian Presidency proposes making AI searches for unknown material voluntary instead of mandatory, while still requiring bulk automated searches of private and encrypted chats for illegal content. Users who opt out of "upload moderation" would be blocked from sending or receiving images, videos, and URLs. Private messengers like Signal and Threema have stated they would cease services in the EU if forced to implement such monitoring.
  • The exact details of the Hungarian proposal have been leaked by Contexte.
• North Korean hackers target Bitcoin ETFs. The FBI warns that North Korean cyber actors are increasingly targeting decentralized finance and cryptocurrency company workers to steal funds through "complex and elaborate" social engineering campaigns. Over the past several months, hackers have researched targets related to cryptocurrency ETFs, indicating possible future attacks.

• Older YubiKeys vulnerable to sophisticated cloning attacks. YubiKeys with firmware versions before 5.7 (released in May) are vulnerable to sophisticated cloning attacks, researchers revealed. Firmware updates are not possible, leaving affected YubiKeys permanently at risk. The attack requires $11,000 in equipment and advanced electrical and cryptographic knowledge, likely limiting it to nation-states or similar entities in targeted scenarios. The risk of widespread attacks is extremely low.
• More Bitcoin miner state seizures:
  • Russia: The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Irkutsk region raided Priangarye, an agricultural community, confiscating 238 Bitcoin mining machines. Authorities allege the miners caused over 68 million rubles (about $758,000) in damages by using electricity meant for domestic use.
  • Thailand: Authorities raided an illegal Bitcoin mine west of Bangkok after residents complained of frequent blackouts for over a month. Bitcoin miners are considered manufacturers and must pay taxes, but illegal mining has been increasing for years.
  • Paraguay: The National Power Administration (ANDE) recently discovered an illegal Bitcoin mining operation in an evangelical church. Last week, ANDE and local police dismantled a massive illegal mining farm near Hernandarias, seizing nearly 700 machines and a transformer.

Use the tools

• Strike integrated support for BOLT 12 payments. "Our initial integration only supports a basic Offer payment flow. However, it paves the way for exciting and more advanced BOLT 12 features over time," said the company.
• Mutiny announced a timeline for shutting down its wallet services. Users are urged to host the app themselves, move funds out and close open lightning channels.

• Braiins OS v24.08 comes with support for Antminer S19 XP Hydro and Antminer T21 models. It also extends underclocking on Antminer S19 XP models and includes various bug fixes and UI improvements. Users with BHB68603 and BHB68603P hashboards can now find compatibility with Braiins OS.
• LDK v0.0.124 is up on crates.io. It features a new crate structure, numerous requested features, many BOLT 12 improvements, faster route-finding, and several bug fixes. Releases in other languages are expected to follow soon, according to the developers.
• LNDK v0.2.0, a standalone daemon that aims to implement BOLT 12 12 functionality externally to LND, has been released.
• Alby Hub v1.7.2 update introduces a new Friends & Family app in the app store, designed for onboarding friends and family. Other updates include a receive-only PoS app, the ability to pay to Lightning addresses, a new savings balance withdrawal UI, and displaying pending balances from closed channels. Mac users also benefit from several desktop app fixes and a new server build.
• Tor Browser v13.5.3 brings important security updates to Firefox.

Other stuff

• Bitcoin Design Newsletter issue 64 is here.
• Ian Slane wrote a guide on how to start contributing to the LDK node project.
• Voltage shared an in-depth analysis of the privacy on the Lightning Network.

• What did we miss? DM us on Nostr.
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