Author: Mike Hearn 2013-08-19 09:16:12
Published on: 2013-08-19T09:16:12+00:00
In an email exchange between John Dillon and Mike Hearn, the question of whether bitcoinj has any protections against peers flooding users with useless garbage was raised. Mike explained that unconfirmed transactions show up as unspendable and in most wallets, they have a little graphic that changes as more peers announce the transaction. However, he acknowledged that most users may not notice or understand this graphic. Despite this issue, all Bitcoin wallets have the same problem, and the default is to not let users spend unconfirmed transactions unless they were created by themselves. When asked if bitcoinj handles DoS attacks by malicious remote peers, Mike said that it does not attempt to do so because such an attack has never been observed, has no obvious profit motive, and would be difficult to pull off since users do not get to choose which nodes the wallets connect to. However, he noted that controlling a user's internet connection could be a way around this caveat. This information is documented on the bitcoinj website.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T15:58:42.605750+00:00