<blockquote>
<p>So is there any way for the attacker to actually receive the rewards?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the attacker isn't limited by hashrate, then they can obviously just fix the proof of work on the modified block. But at that point, they are not an attacker anymore, they're just a competing miner who creates a competing block.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-07T12:20:11.777Z
2022-10-07T12:20:11.777Z
Pieter Wuille
<p>At the end of my lecture, my lecturer asked a question that we never had time to cover:</p>
<p>A miner creates a block A, which contains address b, on which they want to receive their rewards. An attacker changes the contents of block A, replacing address b with an adversarial address b’. What needs to happen for the attacker to receive the rewards for block A?</p>
<p>I know similar questions have been asked before but they all explain why an attacker can't receive the reward, I would like to know if there is any hypothetical scenario in which they could if they weren't limited by hash rate or other factors.</p>
<p>I have been thinking about this and feel like it is a trick question because there is no way that the attacker can just change the address and receive the rewards, because if the attacker edits any data on the block it will produce a different hash and won't be validated by the network, so the attacker won't receive the rewards. So is there any way for the attacker to actually receive the rewards?</p>

<address><block><mining-reward><attack>
How can an attacker change the address to receive someone's reward
Krzysztof Jaminski
# How can an attacker change the address to receive someone's reward

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-10-07)

At the end of my lecture, my lecturer asked a question that we never had time to cover:

A miner creates a block A, which contains address b, on which they want to receive their rewards. An attacker changes the contents of block A, replacing address b with an adversarial address b’. What needs to happen for the attacker to receive the rewards for block A?

I know similar questions have been asked before but they all explain why an attacker can't receive the reward, I would like to know if there is any hypothetical scenario in which they could if they weren't limited by hash rate or other factors.

I have been thinking about this and feel like it is a trick question because there is no way that the attacker can just change the address and receive the rewards, because if the attacker edits any data on the block it will produce a different hash and won't be validated by the network, so the attacker won't receive the rewards. So is there any way for the attacker to actually receive the rewards?

**Tags:** address, block, mining-reward, attack


---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2022-10-07. Score: 4 | Accepted answer

> So is there any way for the attacker to actually receive the rewards?

If the attacker isn't limited by hashrate, then they can obviously just fix the proof of work on the modified block. But at that point, they are not an attacker anymore, they're just a competing miner who creates a competing block.


---

