Author: Mike Hearn 2014-08-18 17:27:18
Published on: 2014-08-18T17:27:18+00:00
Connection rotation can improve a node's knowledge about available peers and make the network stronger against partitioning. This step is important towards decentralizing the DNS seeds for SPV clients, allowing each node to explore the network and return better quality results in getaddr. However, if the location of transaction transmission is rotated, there is a high probability that a sybil pretending to be many nodes will observe it transmitting directly. Tor is currently going through this issue with their guard nodes and how often to rotate them. The attack Ivan is talking about does not require sybil attacks to work, just listening to lots of peers. Raising the bar to require the attacker to receive lots of connections seems like a win.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T02:10:02.698589+00:00