One of crucial communication instruments from Bitcoin, which were used to debate potential protocol changes, was knocked out for several hours from April 2, with a moderator speculated that it was a targeted attack that was supported by Bots.
During the 2nd and three April for several hours, Bitcoin Kernkern developers and researchers couldn’t interact in Google Groups after Google banned the group for spam.
“The Bitcoin Development Mailing List was identified as spam, malware or other malicious content,” says Google's Warning.
The warning of Bitcoin Development Mailing List before the ban was lifted. Source: Google
The Bitcoin nucleus developer Bryan Bishop informed CoinTelegraph that the ban can have been triggered by individuals or bots who reported the Bitcoin mailing list from several accounts in mass report.
It is a typical tactic of attackers who need to ban or censor a community, Bishop said and located that similar incidents occur on YouTube, X and Tiktok very often.
“So it is feasible that this whole thing was triggered by something like this. It was perhaps only someone who clicked on these links to massive standards to report it.”
Google WorkSpace Support's X -account confirmed that the issue was solved on April 3 at 2:23 a.m. UTC in response to certainly one of the opposite moderators of the Bitcoin Mailing List, Ruben Somsen.
Bitcoin Advocate and Head of Block Inc, Jack Dorsey, also attentive to the ban, Google CEO Sundar Pichai asked to look at the issue.
The Bitcoin mailing list is utilized by Bitcoin Kern developers and researchers to debate potential protocol changes to Bitcoin, which protects greater than 1.6 trillion US dollars for network users all over the world.
It has turn out to be one of the vital necessary Bitcoin mailing lists for the reason that pseudonymous creator of the network, Satoshi Nakamoto, shared the white paper from Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list on October 31, 2008.
Bitcoin Mailing List Moderator Planning to remain in Google Groups
Despite the incident, Bishop said that the moderators of the Bitcoin mailing list didn’t intend to maneuver away from communication by e -mail:
“The reality of the situation is that this special mailing list has at all times been e -mail, and so you’ve got to debate the Bitcoin protocol development via e -mail as a way to offer the continuity of the service and you’ve got to interchange it with e -mail.”
The Bitcoin mailing list officially migrated to Google Groups in February 2024.
Source: Bryan Bishop
Previously, the mailing list was hosted on the Linux Foundation, the infrastructure of Open Source Lab by Open Source Lab and Sourceforge.net by Oregon State University.
Bishop suggested that a Bitcoin forum shouldn’t be limited to a certain platform, which indicates that there are several other platforms on which Bitcoin developments are discussed, including Github and the decentralized social network NOSTR.
