📅 Original date posted:2014-11-27
📝 Original message:On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 2:22 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Since this attack vector has been discussed, I started making some
>> measurements on how effective it is to connect to Bitcoin using Tor,
>> and I found that the number of connections dropping to near-zero is
>> a situation which occurs rather frequently, which suggests that there
>> is still room to improve on the DoS handling.
>
> I'm confused by this, I run quite a few nodes exclusively on tor and
> chart their connectivity and have seen no such connection dropping
> behaviour.
In my experience the problem has always been getting bootstrapped.
Most nodes hardly give any hidden service nodes in their getaddr.
(this has been improved in master by including a set of hidden service
seed nodes)
But this assumes -onlynet=tor. Tor with exit nodes should be less
problematic, unless someone managed to DoSban all the exit nodes as
described in the paper (but I've never seen such an attack myself).
> Can you tell me more about how you measured this?
>
> [As an aside I agree that there are lots of things to improve here,
> but the fact that users can in theory be forced off of tor via DOS
> attacks is not immediately concerning to me because its a conscious
> choice users would make to abandon their privacy (and the behaviour of
> the system here is known and intentional). There are other mechanisms
> available for people to relay their transactions than connecting
> directly to the bitcoin network; so their choice isn't just abandon
> privacy or don't use bitcoin at all.]
Right, there's something to be said for splitting your own transaction
submission from normal P2P networking and transaction relay.
(esp for non-SPV wallets which don't inherently leak any information
about their addresses)
There was a pull request about this for Bitcoin Core one, maybe I
closed it unfairly https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/4564 .
Wladimir
Wladimir [ARCHIVE] /
npub1xq…ymc2p
2023-06-07 15:27:34
in reply to nevent1q…9eef
Author Public Key
npub1xqshkqv2g7uea4xzqwvmgjcz7u8vfavw6aazs999v0azsv3w7u3qpymc2pPublished at
2023-06-07 15:27:34Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2014-11-27\n📝 Original message:On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 2:22 AM, Gregory Maxwell \u003cgmaxwell at gmail.com\u003e wrote:\n\u003e\u003e Since this attack vector has been discussed, I started making some\n\u003e\u003e measurements on how effective it is to connect to Bitcoin using Tor,\n\u003e\u003e and I found that the number of connections dropping to near-zero is\n\u003e\u003e a situation which occurs rather frequently, which suggests that there\n\u003e\u003e is still room to improve on the DoS handling.\n\u003e\n\u003e I'm confused by this, I run quite a few nodes exclusively on tor and\n\u003e chart their connectivity and have seen no such connection dropping\n\u003e behaviour.\n\nIn my experience the problem has always been getting bootstrapped.\nMost nodes hardly give any hidden service nodes in their getaddr.\n(this has been improved in master by including a set of hidden service\nseed nodes)\nBut this assumes -onlynet=tor. Tor with exit nodes should be less\nproblematic, unless someone managed to DoSban all the exit nodes as\ndescribed in the paper (but I've never seen such an attack myself).\n\n\u003e Can you tell me more about how you measured this?\n\u003e\n\u003e [As an aside I agree that there are lots of things to improve here,\n\u003e but the fact that users can in theory be forced off of tor via DOS\n\u003e attacks is not immediately concerning to me because its a conscious\n\u003e choice users would make to abandon their privacy (and the behaviour of\n\u003e the system here is known and intentional). There are other mechanisms\n\u003e available for people to relay their transactions than connecting\n\u003e directly to the bitcoin network; so their choice isn't just abandon\n\u003e privacy or don't use bitcoin at all.]\n\nRight, there's something to be said for splitting your own transaction\nsubmission from normal P2P networking and transaction relay.\n(esp for non-SPV wallets which don't inherently leak any information\nabout their addresses)\n\nThere was a pull request about this for Bitcoin Core one, maybe I\nclosed it unfairly https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/4564 .\n\nWladimir",
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