[Bitcoin-development] [BIP 15] Aliases

[slush]

Pieter, it was more rhetorical question than asking for explanation, but
thanks anyway. As an Internet application developer, I of course understand
security issues while using HTTPS and CA.

I have a gut feeling that there simply does not exist any single solution
which is both easy to use and secure enough. At least nobody mentioned it
yet. And if I need to choose between easy solution or secure solution for
aliases, I'll pick that easy one. I mean - we need some solution which will
be easy enough for daily use; it is something what we currently don't have.
But if I want to be really really sure I'm using correct destination for
paying $1mil for a house, I can every time ask for real bitcoin addresses,
this is that secure way which we currently have.

slush

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 2:14 AM, Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 12:58:37AM +0100, slush wrote:
> > Maybe I'm retarded, but where's the point in providing alliases
> containing
> > yet another hash in URL?
>
> Any DNS-based alias system is vulnerable to spoofing. If I can make
> people's
> DNS server believe that mining.cz points to my IP, I'll receive payments
> to
> you...
>
> If no trusted CA is used to authenticate the communication, there is no way
> to be sure the one you are asking how to pay, is the person you want to
> pay.
> Therefore, one solution is to put a bitcoin address in the identification
> string itself, and requiring SSL communication authenticated using the
> respective key.
>
> This makes the identification strings obviously less useful as aliases,
> but pure aliases in the sense of human-typable strings have imho
> limited usefulness anyway - in most cases these identification strings
> will be communicated through other electronic means anyway.
>
> Furthermore, the embedded bitcoin address could be hidden from the user:
> retrieved when first connecting, and stored together with the URI in
> an address book. Like ssh, it could warn the user if the key changes
> (which wil be ignored by most users anyway, but what do you do about
> that?)
>
> --
> Pieter
>
>
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