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Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 20:19:43 -0500
Message-ID: <CAG8oi1MpMVqp_Am6aj=hLV5z-CfY7HNSuMQ6k4uVscM=aKsOYA@mail.gmail.com>
From: William Yager <will.yager@gmail.com>
To: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>, 
	Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001a1139807629818505010566fd
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposal: Encrypt bitcoin messages
Precedence: list

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On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 8:14 PM, Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org> wrote:

>
> Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
>

I'm not. I don't think this proposal is even good.


> You realize that by your own definition even the NSA is mostly a "weak
> passive attacker" They do *not* have the ability to attack more than a
> small, targeted, subset of connection for both technical and political
> reasons. For starters, MITM attacks are easily detected - "Bitcoin network
> attacked by unknown agents! Has your ISP been compromised?" would make for
> great headlines and would soon see the problem fixed both technically and
> politically.
>
>
Again, the NSA might get an absolutely trivial amount of data from
monitoring connections on the Bitcoin network. A bit of publicity is *not*
worth drastically increasing the software complexity of the client.


> In any case, my suggestion of enabling hidden service support by default
> adds both encryption and reasonably good authentication.


Enabling hidden service support by default would introduce an insanely huge
attack surface.

And you're conflating two different things; using Tor is valuable to
Bitcoin because it would provide some anonymity. The encryption aspect is
pretty much useless for us.

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Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<div dir=3D"ltr">On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 8:14 PM, Peter Todd <span dir=3D"l=
tr">&lt;<a href=3D"mailto:pete@petertodd.org" target=3D"_blank">pete@petert=
odd.org</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><div class=3D"gmail_extra"><div class=3D"g=
mail_quote">
<blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" style=3D"margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1p=
x #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class=3D"">
<br>
</div><div class=3D"">Don&#39;t let perfect be the enemy of good.<br></div>=
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>I&#39;m not. I don&#39;t think this propos=
al is even good.</div><div>=C2=A0</div><blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" st=
yle=3D"margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
You realize that by your own definition even the NSA is mostly a &quot;weak=
 passive attacker&quot; They do *not* have the ability to attack more than =
a small, targeted, subset of connection for both technical and political re=
asons. For starters, MITM attacks are easily detected - &quot;Bitcoin netwo=
rk attacked by unknown agents! Has your ISP been compromised?&quot; would m=
ake for great headlines and would soon see the problem fixed both technical=
ly and politically.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Again, the NSA might get an absolutely=
 trivial amount of data from monitoring connections on the Bitcoin network.=
 A bit of publicity is *not* worth drastically increasing the software comp=
lexity of the client.</div>
<div>=C2=A0</div><blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" style=3D"margin:0 0 0 .8=
ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
In any case, my suggestion of enabling hidden service support by default ad=
ds both encryption and reasonably good authentication.</blockquote><div><br=
></div><div>Enabling hidden service support by default would introduce an i=
nsanely huge attack surface.=C2=A0</div>
<div><br></div><div>And you&#39;re conflating two different things; using T=
or is valuable to Bitcoin because it would provide some anonymity. The encr=
yption aspect is pretty much useless for us.</div></div></div></div>

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