[bitcoin-dev] Overview of anti-covert-channel signing techniques

Tim Ruffing crypto at timruffing.de
Sun Mar 22 15:38:21 UTC 2020


On Sun, 2020-03-22 at 11:30 -0400, Russell O'Connor wrote:
> Your claim is that if we don't fix the pubkey issue there is no point
> in fixing the signature issue.  I disagree.  While I think both
> issues need to be fully addressed, the issues around the original
> proposed non-deterministic signature scheme are far more severe. The
> proposal would move us from a deterministic scheme, where spot checks
> are possible, with all the caveats that entails, to a non-
> deterministic scheme where spot checks are impossible.  My hope is
> that we can standardise a scheme that has the advantages of non-
> determinism without the threat of covert channels.

I think we agree that both issues should be addressed, and this is all
what matters in the end. Now that we have a proposal for Schnorr
signatures, it's indeed a good time to work on these issues.

Tim



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