Come-from-Beyond, here's a nice honest way to approach this: discuss with the community what kind of attack you plan on doing before executing it, and then proceed with the attack only if the devs/community tell you that your particular attack will not work.
Good idea, will do it this way.
0.6.0 is the latest version and https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares/archive/bts/0.6.0.zip is the source code, right?
Is it not easier to defend from an attack when it is known how and when it will be executed?
I would say the first step is to attack DevShares without informing the community when and how it will happen...
One of the elements for a successful attack is 'surprise'. If we take this element out, I doubt it can have a successful outcome.
If the goal is to damage the network, this is true. If the goal is to strengthen the network by discovering any vulnerabilities, then it depends on the nature of the vulnerability.
If the weakness is clearly apparent once attention is brought to it, there's no need to actually exploit it to demonstrate that it exists. If a more subtle and controversial weakness exists, a demonstration on either DevShares or the main network might be required.
I appreciate Come-from-Beyond's efforts on this, and am also curious about his hardware angle.