Author: ZmnSCPxj 2021-05-23 18:48:37
Published on: 2021-05-23T18:48:37+00:00
ZmnSCPxj has alerted the Bitcoin community of a possible jamming attack. The attack is related to "failing" an incoming HTLC, where the receiver sends its signature for a transaction spending the HTLC and spending it back to the sender revocable contract. The funds can't be reused until the channel state is updated to cut-through all the transactions (the HTLC transaction and the failure transaction). This creates a practical limit on how long you can keep privkeys offline; if kept offline too long, an attacker can jam all your incoming capacity for long periods of time. The protocol can be modified so that the receiver tells the forwarding node to *first* ask the receiver about every HTLC hash before actually instantiating and sending the HTLC.
Updated on: 2023-06-02T18:28:35.250544+00:00