Author: Gavin Andresen 2011-08-05 01:16:36
Published on: 2011-08-05T01:16:36+00:00
Dan gave an explanation of a "blitcoin" deanonymization mechanism on the Bitcointalk forums. The mechanism is not complicated and involves connecting to every node in the cloud through sweeping/IRC/get_peers messages. The first IP to consistently relay transactions for a given identity is that given identity. There are only about 3000 to 8000 IPs that are Bitcoin nodes that accept inbound connections, so creating one's own mass cluster of IPs is possible. On average, nodes have seven outbound connections, so it should take only a few hundred unique to be one of the first-hop peers even for the outbound-only set. This mechanism de-anonymizes via IP address and not Bitcoin address, which could explain why there is trouble with network connectivity.
Updated on: 2023-05-26T19:58:32.274719+00:00