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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 20:35:26 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <D40F9E9D-DB6C-4083-A9E8-C5EBC363DB30@voskuil.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20160628182202.GA5519@fedora-21-dvm>

Hi Peter,

What in this BIP makes a MITM attack easier (or easy) to detect, or increases the probability of one being detected?

e

> On Jun 28, 2016, at 8:22 PM, Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 06:45:58PM +0200, Eric Voskuil via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>>> 1) Transaction censorship
>>> ISPs, WIFI provider or any other MITM, can holdback/censor unconfirmed
>>> transactions. Regardless if you are a miner or a validation/wallet node.
>>> 
>>> 2) Peer censorship
>>> MITM can remove or add entries from a "addr" message.
>>> 
>>> 3) Fingerprinting
>>> ISPs or any other MITM can intercept/inject fingerprinting relevant
>>> messages like "mempool" to analyze the bitcoin network.
>> 
>> Encryption alone cannot protect against a MITM attack in an anonymous and permissionless network. This is accepted in the BIP (and your follow-up reply).
> 
> Being able to easily detect MITM attacks is a _huge_ step forward that
> shouldn't be underestimated; even if 99% of users aren't in a position to
> detect the MITM you only need a small subset of users that do the necessary
> checks to alert the wider community, who can then respond with stronger
> security measures. Those measures are likely to be more costly - authenticated
> systems are significantly harder than not - so better to save your efforts
> until the need for them is more obvious.
> 
> Also the fact that an attack has a reasonable probability of detection is a big
> disincentive for many types of attackers - note how one of the things revealed
> in the Snowden leaks was the fact that the NSA generally tries quite hard to
> avoid tipping off targets to the fact that they're being surveilled, with a
> myriad of carefully scripted policies to control when and how exploits are used
> against targets.
> 
> -- 
> https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org


  reply	other threads:[~2016-06-28 18:35 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 [this message]
2016-06-28 20:14           ` Peter Todd
2016-06-28 20:29             ` Eric Voskuil
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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