Author: Joost Jager 2022-07-11 09:08:53
Published on: 2022-07-11T09:08:53+00:00
In a discussion about the Lightning Network's ability to handle denial of service (DoS) attacks, Matt Corallo and Joost Jager discuss the effectiveness of backpressure as a means of preventing spam from attackers. They note that backpressure works automatically to apply pressure backwards until nodes are appropriately ratelimiting the source of traffic. Jager has coded up a simple single node simulation to demonstrate how backpressure works, and he observes that while legitimate users may hit the limit and have their rate decreased, this is not usually a problem because their rate limits are much higher than what they need. Spammers will also tend to avoid hitting the maximum rate to avoid having their rate limit slashed. The discussion also touches on differences between Lightning and the internet with regard to tracing sources of DoS attacks, and the possibility of extending backpressure to HTLC forwarding rate limiters to combat short-lived spam.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T09:12:49.651526+00:00