From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org>
To: Jeremy Spilman <jeremy@taplink•co>
Cc: "bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net"
<bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Peer Discovery and Overlay
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 09:02:28 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20131224140228.GA9838@savin> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <op.w8k9l8qayldrnw@laptop-air.hsd1.ca.comcast.net>
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On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 12:52:46AM -0800, Jeremy Spilman wrote:
> Some really nice efforts out there to map and analyze the bitcoin P2P
> network.
>
> The current protocol apparently recommends returning up to 2500 addresses
> from 'getaddr'. I'm not sure how much clients are expected to probe the
> address space in order to select 'far-apart' peers, or how much such an
> process would even attempt to achieve.
The logic is that by simply connecting to peers at random you keep the
network structure as a whole randomized. You don't need to make any
specific attempt at connecting to "far-apart" peers.
> How much does it matter if the ability to discover the entire network of
> peers is fast or slow? There are probably pros and cons to both.
>
> Is there any thought to how existing bitcoin node relations, and the ease
> at which peers can be discovered, becomes a service in itself, or even
> possibly a vulnerability?
Keep in mind it's easy for better knowledge of the network to be a
vulnerability; the number of full nodes is small enough that DoS
attacking all of them is quite feasible.
The other big vulnerability is that getaddr data is best effort; we
currently have no mechanism to ensure that nodes are in fact operated by
separate individuals. It'd be quite easy for someone to set up a
relatively small number of nodes that only advertise themselves in the
getaddr information. Over time they would get proportionally more
incoming connections than is "fair"
As for node addresses being a service, that's what the DNS seeds are!
bitcoinj clients, for instance, depend very heavily on those seeds and
can be easily compromised in a variety of ways by them.
--
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2013-12-24 14:02 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2013-12-24 8:52 Jeremy Spilman
2013-12-24 10:47 ` Tier Nolan
2013-12-24 14:02 ` Peter Todd [this message]
2013-12-24 17:11 ` Warren Togami Jr.
2013-12-24 17:15 ` Mike Hearn
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