Author: Mats Jerratsch 2015-10-19 08:51:52
Published on: 2015-10-19T08:51:52+00:00
In a forum discussion on the Lightning Network, Mats Jerratsch proposes that the IP-PubKey-relationship should be public and added to the gossip protocol. This proposal aims to mitigate risks associated with revealing network addresses such as DDoS attacks, establishing connections between real identities and PubKeys, and MITM and eavesdropping attacks.To make it difficult to relate merchant IP and Pubkey, he suggests lightning nodes can always have a dedicated IP address. Additionally, a map of IP/PubKey can be created by those who want to provide it, and the object which relates a pubkey and IP will be signed with the private key.The email thread discusses the possibility of linking network addresses and lightning ids, which would allow attackers to plan theft or denial-of-service attacks more easily. One option is to cheaply work out the lightning id associated with an IP address, while the second option would confirm or deny whether a lightning id is provided by a particular IP address.However, implementing any of the above options should be delayed until later since it may be easy to link network addresses and lightning ids by traffic analysis until there are thousands of lightning nodes.One suggestion to handle the first option is through a "fund a new channel by lightning transaction" operation, which includes Alice's network address in the payment instructions to Bob. This way, Alice reveals her IP to Bob precisely, and Bob only reveals his IP if he agrees to open a channel.To prevent attackers from verifying which of Alice's connections is Bob during a MITM attack, the nonce X can be replaced by X and Y, with X sent in cleartext while Y is included in the info being signed.
Updated on: 2023-05-23T21:09:48.917419+00:00