Author: Jonas Schnelli 2016-05-25 09:36:24
Published on: 2016-05-25T09:36:24+00:00
The discussion revolves around the maximum message length that can be sent in an encrypted package/message in Bitcoin Improvement Protocol (BIP). The current assumption is that an encrypted package can contain 1..n bitcoin messages, but the suggestion is to reduce the outer (encrypted) length field while keeping the 4 byte length on the protocol level. This would not limit the length of Bitcoin messages and allow the receiver to detect malformed data sooner. The tradeoff is slightly higher bandwidth and CPU requirements due to additional headers+MACs. TLS/SSH tunneling is already possible with third-party software like stunnel, but what is required is a simple, openssl-independent traffic encryption built into the core p2p layer. The implementation is not utterly complex, and before deployment, it will require intense cryptoanalysis first.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T04:33:27.606801+00:00