From: Eric Voskuil <eric@voskuil•org>
To: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org>
Cc: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP 151
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 22:29:54 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <4DCF7DD2-6533-4F79-8CA1-871B67C01BDA@voskuil.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20160628201447.GA1148@fedora-21-dvm>
> On Jun 28, 2016, at 10:14 PM, Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 08:35:26PM +0200, Eric Voskuil wrote:
>> Hi Peter,
>>
>> What in this BIP makes a MITM attack easier (or easy) to detect, or increases the probability of one being detected?
>
> BIP151 gives users the tools to detect a MITM attack.
>
> It's kinda like PGP in that way: lots of PGP users don't properly check keys,
PGP requires a secure side channel for transmission of public keys. How does one "check" a key of an anonymous peer? I know you well enough to know you wouldn't trust a PGP key received over an insecure channel.
All you can prove is that you are talking to a peer and that communications in the session remain with that peer. The peer can be the attacker. As Jonas has acknowledged, authentication is required to actually guard against MITM attacks.
> so an attacker won't have a hard time MITM attacking those users. But some
> users do check keys, a labor intensive manual process, but not a process that
> requires any real cryptographic sophistication, let alone writing any code.
> It's very difficult for widescale attackers to distinguish the users who do
> check keys from the ones that don't, so if you MITM attack _any_ user you run
> the risk of running into one of the few that does check, and those users can
> alert everyone else.
>
> The key thing, is we need to get everyones communications encrypted first: if
> we don't the MITM attacker can intercept 99% of the communications with 0% risk
> of detection, because the non-sophisticated users are trivially distinguishable from the sophisticated users: just find the users with unencrypted
> communications!
>
> --
> https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-06-28 20:29 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 59+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-06-28 2:31 [bitcoin-dev] BIP 151 use of HMAC_SHA512 Rusty Russell
2016-06-28 7:17 ` [bitcoin-dev] BIP 151 Eric Voskuil
2016-06-28 8:26 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-06-28 16:45 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-28 18:22 ` Peter Todd
2016-06-28 18:35 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-28 20:14 ` Peter Todd
2016-06-28 20:29 ` Eric Voskuil [this message]
2016-06-28 20:36 ` Peter Todd
2016-06-28 21:22 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-28 21:36 ` Gregory Maxwell
2016-06-28 21:40 ` Cameron Garnham
2016-06-28 22:07 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-28 22:33 ` Cameron Garnham
2016-06-28 23:29 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-29 0:06 ` Nick ODell
2016-06-28 21:59 ` Eric Voskuil
[not found] ` <CAAS2fgQ0Ocs8hF+pf+fWfkKKhQwxNKpY=JHpb_bwua7neVO8tg@mail.gmail.com>
2016-06-28 23:34 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-28 20:06 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-06-28 23:31 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-29 11:17 ` Alfie John
2016-06-30 11:56 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-30 12:20 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-06-30 12:27 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-30 12:43 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-06-30 15:22 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-30 16:52 ` Peter Todd
2016-06-30 18:25 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-30 19:06 ` Peter Todd
2016-06-30 20:26 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-28 19:55 ` Gregory Maxwell
2016-06-28 23:33 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-29 1:01 ` Gregory Maxwell
2016-06-30 9:57 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-30 13:03 ` Pieter Wuille
2016-06-30 15:10 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-08-31 14:29 ` Pieter Wuille
2016-06-30 13:36 ` Erik Aronesty
2016-06-30 14:47 ` Alfie John
2016-07-02 9:44 ` Chris Priest
2016-06-28 12:13 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-06-28 17:39 ` Eric Voskuil
2016-06-28 7:19 ` [bitcoin-dev] BIP 151 use of HMAC_SHA512 Jonas Schnelli
2016-06-28 8:31 ` Arthur Chen
2016-06-29 18:34 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-06-29 20:13 ` Peter Todd
2016-06-29 20:31 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-06-29 1:00 ` Rusty Russell
2016-06-29 1:38 ` Arthur Chen
2016-06-29 1:56 ` Ethan Heilman
2016-06-29 6:58 ` Pieter Wuille
2016-06-29 14:38 ` Ethan Heilman
2016-06-29 18:46 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-07-01 3:25 ` Rusty Russell
2016-07-01 22:42 ` Zooko Wilcox
2016-07-04 1:23 ` Arthur Chen
2016-07-04 1:44 ` Arthur Chen
2016-07-04 6:47 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-07-04 6:37 ` Jonas Schnelli
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