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Re:Bitcoin Exchanges Under ‘Massive and Concerted Attack’ by VMG on Tuesday February 11, 2014 @05:25PM (#7220936)
A valid digital signature gives a recipient reason to believe that the message was created by a known sender, such that the sender cannot deny having sent the message (authentication and non-repudiation) and that the message was not altered in transit (integrity).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature

The purpose of the blockchain is to establish an ordered sequence of transactions.

Re:Bitcoin Exchanges Under ‘Massive and Concerted Attack’ by lmm on Tuesday February 11, 2014 @05:50PM (#7221108)
Sure, but no-one calculates digital signatures in their head. Your bitcoins are worthless without computer systems, and those computer systems are the subject of attack by thieves.
Re:Bitcoin Exchanges Under ‘Massive and Concerted Attack’ by VMG on Wednesday February 12, 2014 @02:53AM (#7223110)
Sure, but this attack is not about that.

This is a DDOS attack on the integrity on the distributed database, which is very bad, but not able to spend Bitcoin that isn't yours.