Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
arxiv.org
Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
1–10 of 40 posts
Re: Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
#2Tor and Bitcoin hide fundamentally different things in their pseudonymity specs. It's like people think Tor is magic anonymity peanut butter they can spread on whichever project they wish.
Re: Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
#3Tor and Bitcoin hide fundamentally different things in their pseudonymity specs. It's like people think Tor is magic anonymity peanut butter they can spread on whichever project they wish.
In fact Bitcoin design does not contain elements hinting that anonymity was ever a goal. People using Bitcoin over Tor might just want to circumvent censorship aka Tor as glorified proxy.
Re: Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
#4[deleted]
Re: Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
#5Tor and Bitcoin hide fundamentally different things in their pseudonymity specs. It's like people think Tor is magic anonymity peanut butter they can spread on whichever project they wish.
In fact Bitcoin design does not contain elements hinting that anonymity was ever a goal. People using Bitcoin over Tor might just want to circumvent censorship aka Tor as glorified proxy.
Right, but it doesn't work. That's the whole point of the article. Tor+random app usually equals massive vulnerability.
I should add I learned that the hard way trying to integrate Tor with OpenBazaar.
What might be fun is stenography over the Tor protocol. Anybody interested?
Re: Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
#6Tor and Bitcoin hide fundamentally different things in their pseudonymity specs. It's like people think Tor is magic anonymity peanut butter they can spread on whichever project they wish.
In fact Bitcoin design does not contain elements hinting that anonymity was ever a goal. People using Bitcoin over Tor might just want to circumvent censorship aka Tor as glorified proxy.
If I understand the paper correctly, you can't rely on Tor for that either. You can disable other Bitcoin peers on the Tor network:
> It turns out that by exploiting a Bitcoin built-in reputation based DoS protection an attacker is able to force specific Bitcoin peers to ban Tor Exit nodes of her choice.
Section VII lists some countermeasures.
Very happy to see academics having an increasing interest in this area.
Re: Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
#7" Many of these details do not appear
in any specifications and were obtained by a careful analysis
of the corresponding source code. This is especially true for
Bitcoin for which there exists no official documentation except
for the original white paper [14] and Bitcoin Wiki[3]."
Well that seems a bit odd.
Re: Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
#8For a better way of pseudonymity check darkcoin and it's masternode network.
Re: Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
#9" Many of these details do not appear in any specifications and were obtained by a careful analysis of the corresponding source code. This is especially true for Bitcoin for which there exists no official documentation except for the original white paper [14] and Bitcoin Wiki[3]." Well that seems a bit odd.
You have no idea how deep that rabbit hole goes. Bitcoin Core is referred to as a "reference implementation", which means "you should implement all bugs referenced by Bitcoin Core in transaction verification, or you have your choice of being kicked off the Bitcoin consensus immediately, which is bad, or at any point of an attacker's choosing, which is catastrophic."
Re: Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
#10" Many of these details do not appear in any specifications and were obtained by a careful analysis of the corresponding source code. This is especially true for Bitcoin for which there exists no official documentation except for the original white paper [14] and Bitcoin Wiki[3]." Well that seems a bit odd.
> Well that seems a bit odd.
Everything known about Bitcoin comes from people directly reading the source code. That's all that was originally released next to the paper. Everything since then has been based on careful review of the source code and writing additional documentation from that understanding.
Edit: the documentation (that your reply is referring to) exists now because people spent the time reading the source code. This documentation didn't exist originally.