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A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

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Re: A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

#71

Post by embedding-shape »

infogulch wrote: post #11
jjmarr wrote: post #4

From the main article, I2P has 55,000 computers, the botnet tried to add 700,000 infected routers to I2P to use it as a backup command-and-control system. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46976825 This, predictably, broke I2P.

That's an interesting stress test for I2P. They should try to fix that, the protocol should be resilient to such an event. Even if there are 10x more bad nodes than good nodes (assuming they were noncompliant I2P actors based on that thread) the good nodes should still be able to find each other and continue working. To be fair spam will always be a thorny problem in completely decentralized protocols.

> Even if there are 10x more bad nodes than good nodes [...] the good nodes should still be able to find each other

What network, distributed or decentralized, can survive such an event? Most of the protocols break down once you hit some N% threshold of the network being bad nodes, asking it to survive 1000%+ bad nodes when others usually is something like "When at least half the nodes are good". Are there existing decentralized/distributed protocols that would survive a 1000% attack of bad nodes?

Re: A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

#72

Post by seertaak »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #30
infogulch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting stress test for I2P. They should try to fix that, the protocol should be resilient to such an event. Even if there are 10x more bad nodes than good nodes (assuming they were noncompliant I2P actors based on that thread) the good nodes should still be able to find each other and continue working. To be fair spam will always be a thorny problem in completely decentralized protocols.

Finding good nodes is a thorny problem for human friendship, too!

Funny and excellent comment!

Re: A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

#73

Post by zamadatix »

Aurornis wrote: post #44
ddtaylor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord has a lot of terrible servers. This is one of the reasons they were not trusted when they came out and wanted to do identity verification. They already have a lot of information yet fail to do meaningful enforcement at scale.

Only a couple years ago the outrage was that Discord was too eagerly banning servers and users. I know several people whose Discord accounts were banned because they participated in a server that later had some talk of illegal activities in one of the channels. There are similar stories all over Reddit.

If a Walmart has ~100 people in it and wants to get rid of 4 shoplifters but really sucks at selecting them well then the likely result is 4 normal people are very upset while all of the shoplifters are still there.

In the same scenario, even if Walmart is right about who they ejected 75% of the time then they still have ~1 shoplifter remaining and ~1 very upset person.

Even in an ideal world where Walmart is right about ejection 100% of the time it doesn't mean they start receiving 0 new shoplifters either, it just means the number of people wrongly made upset is 0.

Discord's problem (on both ends) lies in lack of depth in investigating bans. It takes resources to review when someone shouldn't be banned and it takes resources to make sure you ban everybody. Putting too low of resources into banning just means that both sides of the scale manage to get tipped in the wring direction at the same time.

Re: A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

#75

Post by kkfx »

kbrkbr wrote: post #70
kkfx wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why the Web of Trust, or classic GNUPG key signing parties are a forgotten/ignored must have. Anyone can change and go rouge of course, but it's statistically less likely.

If I understand gp correctly, the web of trust comes after finding these human nodes, and will not help you in the process.

It doesn't work for I2P due to its design, but for things like Nostr, it works well. Essentially, the goal is to build up a list of "known" reliable relays over time, while simultaneously blacklisting anyone who joins and proves to be unreliable relying on the statistic that collaborative individuals outnumber hostile ones in any sufficiently large cohort.

Of course, it's far from being 100% effective, but it mitigates the issue significantly.

Re: A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

#76

Post by _yclj »

kkfx wrote: post #75
kbrkbr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand gp correctly, the web of trust comes after finding these human nodes, and will not help you in the process.

It doesn't work for I2P due to its design, but for things like Nostr, it works well. Essentially, the goal is to build up a list of "known" reliable relays over time, while simultaneously blacklisting anyone who joins and proves to be unreliable relying on the statistic that collaborative individuals outnumber hostile ones in any sufficiently large cohort. Of course, it's far from being 100% effective, but it mitigat…

Hostile entities generally have a lot of money they can use to perform a Sybil attack.

Re: A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

#77

Post by _yclj »

flipped wrote: post #62
cyphar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While anyone can run a Tor node and register it as available, the tags that Tor relays get assigned and the list of relays is controlled by 9 consensus servers[1] that are run by different members the Tor project (in different countries). They can thus easily block nodes. [1]: https://consensus-health.torproject.org/

It's 10, not 9. And there are severe problems with having a total of 10 DA be the essential source of truth for whole network. It would be trivial to DDoS the DAs and bring down the Tor network or at the very least, disrupt it: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10755 . It's the only complaint I have of the current state of Tor. Anyone should be able to run directory authority, regardless if you trust the operator or not (sa…

Anyone can. The DA code is open source and is used whenever you run a testnet. You can also run a DA on the mainnet - how do you think the 10 primary DAs exist? They're not 10 computers owned by a single organization - they're 10 mutually trusting individuals. However, most of the network won't trust you.

Re: A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

#78

Post by _yclj »

flipped wrote: post #67
torben-friis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh ffs. Whenever I think my opinion on the state of the world can’t get any lower, things somehow manage to get dumber.

State sponsored cyber attacks are news to you? It's been a thing since more than 2 decades now.

[flagged]

Re: A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

#79

Post by _yclj »

Aurornis wrote: post #44
ddtaylor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord has a lot of terrible servers. This is one of the reasons they were not trusted when they came out and wanted to do identity verification. They already have a lot of information yet fail to do meaningful enforcement at scale.

Only a couple years ago the outrage was that Discord was too eagerly banning servers and users. I know several people whose Discord accounts were banned because they participated in a server that later had some talk of illegal activities in one of the channels. There are similar stories all over Reddit.

Two things can be true at once. They can ban normal things too much and ban bad things too little.

Re: A Botnet Accidentally Destroyed I2P

#80

Post by _yclj »

Roark66 wrote: post #61

Is there a shittier summary anywhere, please? Or did the author reached the peak of enshittification? Honestly, did the bot implementation have bugs or was it a proper implementation that crashed the network due to sheer numbers? Also, how does changing the encryption standard affect anything if the bots tried to integrate correctly with the network? Is the problem "fixed" or is it not? Elsewhere I found large number…

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