Published on: 2013-04-09T19:43:33+00:00
In an email conversation on the Bitcoin-development mailing list, Gregory Maxwell and Caleb James DeLisle discussed the potential impact of anti-virus software on Bitcoin's testnet chain. They explored the consequences of AV software on web browser caches and file corruption. Caleb suggested contacting an AV company to inquire about the smallest amount of data they have a signature on. Gregory tested the testnet chain with the EICAR test string and found that most AV tools do not scan big binary files of unknown types. However, he proposed implementing storage scrambling if needed. The thread also included a link to Precog, a next-generation analytics platform for data science.Caleb James DeLisle initiated an email conversation regarding how anti-virus software might respond to certain streams of bytes sent across a TCP socket or persisted to disk. The use of the EICAR test string on the testnet chain revealed that most AV tools do not scan large binary files of unknown types. Storage scrambling was suggested as a solution, where each node would pick a random word to XOR their stored data with.The discussion on the Bitcoin-development mailing list involved various topics related to the use of blockchains. Mike Hearn argued that defining "abuse" in economic terms could exclude legitimate uses and proposed solutions to discourage the use of blockchains for illegal content. Backwards compatibility and the issue of uneconomical outputs in Bitcoin transactions were also discussed. Jeff Garzik expressed openness towards a blacklist for Bitcoin transactions but emphasized the importance of openness in its implementation. The potential problem of spammers encoding harmful content within the blockchain was acknowledged, leading to the consideration of mitigation efforts.Mike Hearn and Jeff Garzik engaged in an email exchange discussing the issue of uneconomical outputs in Bitcoin transactions. The proposed patch to address this issue lacked a clear definition of what constitutes an uneconomical output, but it was deemed acceptable by Hearn. Backwards compatibility problems were highlighted, and the payment protocol work was suggested as a prerequisite for addressing this issue.The conversation on the Bitcoin-development mailing list focused on the problem of uneconomical outputs in Bitcoin transactions. Developers agreed that such outputs should be made non-standard but faced challenges in defining what is considered uneconomical. The proposed patch lacked a clear concept, and concerns about backwards compatibility were raised. The discussion was postponed until the completion of the payment protocol work.Jeff Garzik expressed openness towards a blacklist for Bitcoin transactions if done openly. He emphasized that storing large data transactions is not the primary purpose of Bitcoin. The consensus among developers was to make uneconomical outputs non-standard and implement metrics and heuristics to address the issue. One suggestion was to block uneconomic UTXO creation as a stopgap solution to data spam.Mike Hearn highlighted the root problem with Bitcoin, which is the assumption that the blockchain will always be a free, uncensorable, and permanent data structure. Legal issues and the need to host blocks forever were identified as challenges. Solutions such as charging for access to older parts of the chain and serving up blocks encrypted under a random key were proposed to discourage abuse and incentivize node hosting.The importance of consistent uptimes of nodes when bringing up a new node, especially on low-bandwidth connections, was mentioned. The absence of blacklists was suggested as an option for those who want to store and serve the chain without any cost. However, different approaches may be adopted by others.The discussion on the Bitcoin-development mailing list revolved around the issue of invalid addresses being exploited within the system. Suggestions were made to mitigate this issue through the implementation of blacklists and Bloom filtering, although concerns were raised about their effectiveness. The potential extraction of illegal content from the blockchain by law enforcement forensic tools was also discussed.Peter Todd and Mike Hearn discussed potential hacks to the Bitcoin protocol in an email exchange. Hearn proposed a solution to prevent spamming by serving blocks encrypted under a random key, but Todd raised concerns about its dependency on consistent uptimes of other nodes. The conversation also touched on the use of Bloom filtering and the idea of blacklists for abusive transactions, with Todd opposing the use of blacklists altogether.A Reddit user reported attempts to upload various forms of data into the Bitcoin blockchain, including the entire AMIBIOS source code, Wikileaks data, GPG encrypted files, and hidden wiki cp/jb sections. Links were provided to addresses used for encryption, and discussions surrounding the storage of data on the Litecoin chain were also mentioned.These conversations and discussions provide insights into various technical and philosophical aspects related to Bitcoin's development, the impact of anti-virus software, the challenges of uneconomical outputs in transactions, the potential need for blacklists, and the storage of data on the blockchain.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T04:38:30.399739+00:00