Author: Gregory Maxwell 2016-06-09 01:24:09
Published on: 2016-06-09T01:24:09+00:00
A member of the bitcoin-dev group, Alfie John, expressed concerns about the potential for a middleman to suppress the initial 'encinit' message during negotiation in BIP 151, leading to both peers falling back to plaintext. While some argue that reduction to plaintext isn't an interesting attack vector for an active attacker as they can simply impersonate the remote side, this is addressed via authentication which is done by a separate specification building on this one. Without authentication, however, this only provides protection against passive attackers. It is suggested that peers negotiate a secure channel from the outset or back out entirely with no option of falling back and indicate this loudly by the daemon listening on an entirely new port.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T23:31:03.157061+00:00