public inbox for bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99•net>
To: Andreas Schildbach <andreas@schildbach•de>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposal for P2P Wireless (Bluetooth LE) transfer of Payment URI
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2015 14:57:03 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANEZrP3Vzw5L3tOc7p+ZKY=GGhoVSTRzARgD72uP-KcqCfK4rQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <mavs84$hsi$1@ger.gmane.org>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1969 bytes --]

>
> For a BIP standard, I think we should skip "bitcoin:" URIs entirely and
> publish BIP70 payment requests instead.
>

Agreed - it's not clear to me at all that this partial address scheme is
actually secure. The assumption appears to be that the MITM must match the
address prefix generated by the genuine merchant. But if they can do a
wireless MITM they can just substitute their own address prefix/partial
address, no?

To avoid MITM attacks the sender must know who they are sending money to,
and that means they must see a human understandable name that's
cryptographically bound to the right public key. Displaying partial
addresses to the user is not going to solve this unless users manually
compare key prefixes across the screens.... which is even less convenient
than a QR code.

I think it should be explained why to
> prefer broadcasting payment requests over picking them up via near field
> radio.
>

This is probably an artifact of Apple's restrictions on iOS. Only the
iPhone 6 has NFC hardware and Apple don't expose it via any public API. It
can however support Bluetooth LE.

Apple isn't a big deal in Germany because iPhone only achieved about 17%
market share during the quarter when the iPhone 6 launched. Normally it's
closer to 10-13%. Most other markets are similar.

However in the USA, UK, Australia and Japan iOS is still a big deal and NFC
is going to be seen as a non-universal solution there. At least, until
Apple catches up and provides an NFC API.

It's certainly not a problem to have a working radio based broadcast
system, though the theoretician in me wonders what  happens when lots of
people are trying to pay simultaneously for something that has equal cost
..... e.g. buying movie tickets at a counter. NFC and QR codes prevent any
kind of "oops I paid for someone elses stuff" confusion.

In practice of course Bitcoin payments are not normally popular enough for
this to be a problem outside of Bitcoin community events.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2528 bytes --]

  reply	other threads:[~2015-02-05 13:57 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 43+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-02-05  8:01 Paul Puey
2015-02-05 13:46 ` Andreas Schildbach
2015-02-05 13:57   ` Mike Hearn [this message]
2015-02-05 20:06 Paul Puey
2015-02-05 20:28 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-05 20:37   ` Paul Puey
2015-02-05 20:43     ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-05 20:44   ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-05 20:50     ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-05 20:59       ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-05 21:19       ` Brian Hoffman
2015-02-05 21:23         ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-05 21:36         ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-05 21:46           ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-05 22:07             ` Paul Puey
2015-02-05 22:10               ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-05 22:49                 ` Roy Badami
2015-02-05 23:22                   ` MⒶrtin HⒶboⓋštiak
2015-02-05 23:02                 ` William Swanson
2015-02-05 23:34                   ` Roy Badami
2015-02-05 23:59                     ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-06  8:59                       ` Roy Badami
2015-02-06  9:13                         ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-06  0:58                     ` Paul Puey
2015-02-05 23:22                 ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-05 23:36                   ` MⒶrtin HⒶboⓋštiak
2015-02-05 23:46                     ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-06  0:04                       ` MⒶrtin HⒶboⓋštiak
2015-02-06  0:22                         ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-06  0:36                           ` Martin Habovštiak
2015-02-06  1:29                             ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-06  9:07                               ` MⒶrtin HⒶboⓋštiak
2015-02-10 16:55                                 ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-10 17:16                                   ` MⒶrtin HⒶboⓋštiak
2015-02-10 17:56                                     ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-06  0:49                       ` Paul Puey
2015-02-06  0:50                         ` Martin Habovštiak
2015-02-06  1:05                         ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-06  2:09                           ` Paul Puey
2015-02-05 22:02         ` Paul Puey
2015-02-05 22:01       ` Paul Puey
2015-02-05 22:05         ` Eric Voskuil
2015-02-05 22:08           ` Paul Puey

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to='CANEZrP3Vzw5L3tOc7p+ZKY=GGhoVSTRzARgD72uP-KcqCfK4rQ@mail.gmail.com' \
    --to=mike@plan99$(echo .)net \
    --cc=andreas@schildbach$(echo .)de \
    --cc=bitcoin-development@lists$(echo .)sourceforge.net \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox