Author: Gregory Maxwell 2013-05-06 18:25:50
Published on: 2013-05-06T18:25:50+00:00
In an email conversation from May 6, 2013, Adam Back discusses the primary vulnerability of Bitcoin, which he believes is network attacks that induce network splits and lower difficulty to trick a local area of the network into accepting an orphan branch as the true block chain. Back calculates that it would cost approximately six million dollars to reduce the difficulty in an isolated fork by a factor of four, while reducing it by a factor of 1000 would cost about eight million dollars. He notes that there may be cheaper attacks on Bitcoin than this method. To prevent such attacks, Back argues that starting from a high difficulty is essential, making checkpoints necessary.Back also points out that most of the binaries and tar balls for Linux are not signed or served from SSL, which could pose a security risk. When discussing the similarity between the bootstrap problem faced by Bitcoin and Tor, Back notes that while Tor has centrally controlled directories that publish an official truth of the network, it is still centralized. He believes that Bitcoin may require higher assurance due to the motivation for attackers to put more effort into attacking it with financial gain in mind. While both projects prioritize decentralization, both would like to further decentralize.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T16:55:05.147001+00:00