[Bitcoin-development] Proposal: Encrypt bitcoin messages

[Jeff Garzik]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 8:16 PM, Peter Todd <pete at petertodd.org> wrote:
> On 19 August 2014 19:40:39 GMT-04:00, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik at bitpay.com> wrote:
>>Encryption is of little value if you may deduce the same information
>>by observing packet sizes and timings.
>
> That is simply incorrect. The resources required to do that kind of monitoring are very high; even the NSA can't pull it off consistently for

Hardly.  For example, when a new block arrives on the network, a
single observer at a single location may obtain a binary "likely|not
bitcoin protocol" decision from a spike in usage correlated with
sudden, global network activity after a period of inactivity.  I'll
not detail all such metrics.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
Bitcoin core developer and open source evangelist
BitPay, Inc.      https://bitpay.com/