[Bitcoin-development] Abnormally Large Tor node accepting only Bitcoin traffic

Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell at gmail.com
Mon Jul 28 14:08:05 UTC 2014


On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 5:31 AM, Robert McKay <robert at mckay.com> wrote:
> I don't think Sybil attack is the right term for this.. there is only
> one IP address.. one "identity".

The bitcoin protocol is more or less identityless. It's using up lots
of network capacity, "number of sockets" is as pretty close as you
get.

> I'm not even sure that this behaviour can be considered abuse.. it's
> pretty much following the rules and maybe even improving the transaction
> and block propagation.

It isn't relaying transactions or blocks as far as anyone with a
connection to it can tell.

and sure, probably not much to worry about— people have been running
spy nodes for a long time, at least that much is not new.




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