pull down to refresh
10 sats \ 2 replies \ @benthecarman 5 Jun 2023 \ on: Tor now has a PoW based DoS mitigation feature in v0.4.8.1a with new algo Equi-X bitcoin
I think this is stupid, attackers will have ASICs and users will not, so either the difficulty needs to be so high, normal users can't use it, or the difficulty is low enough and it means nothing to attackers.
Please read up on RandomX and the history of Equi-X: https://github.com/tevador/equix/blob/master/devlog.md
Both generate "random" code based on the hash of the last block and you have millions of algorithms which you simply can't put onto silicon, since actually a modern CPU/GPU is simply the best ASIC. RandomX has been out four years now and hasn't been "broken" by any kind of ASIC.
Sure, an old CPU will take x10 or x100 the time to solve, but this is acceptable to mitigate DoS, when an attacker needs 1 second and someone with a 15 year old Pentium needs 100 seconds. Captchas used on hidden services take mostly more with several failures but don't protect the service like this solution does.
reply
The Mining Algo was designed to be a Asic-Resistent
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/proposals/327-pow-over-intro.txt