The Bitcoin protocol and consensus rules remain intact; the hashrate of approximately 64,000 mining machines was redirected

Odaily report: According to OCEAN monitoring, approximately 64,000 Bitcoin mining machines were taken control of, and about 13 EH/s of hashrate was redirected to the OCEAN mining pool. The incident began at around 8 PM Central Time that evening. OCEAN reported that its hashrate once rose to approximately 50 EH/s, then stabilized at around 40 EH/s; the diverted hashrate later dropped to approximately 100 PH/s, and most of the affected mining machines were pulled back or went offline within a short period. All redirected output flowed to a payment address controlled by a single attacker, but the attacker did not mine any blocks, and the address received no payment; the lost income of the miners of the hijacked machines cannot be recovered. Hosting provider CoreX Hosting was the first to notify the operator, saying it discovered unauthorized changes to the mining pool settings of the affected machines. One operator said the entire mining operation was affected and suspected the entry point was the mining machine fleet management software Luxor Commander, but this connection has not been confirmed. In the days before November 14, there had already been reports of unauthorized changes to mining pool settings, and the incident may not be isolated. The Bitcoin protocol and consensus rules were not compromised; what failed was the operational software connecting mining companies and hardware.