Let me know how real can my paranoia be. Let's suppose the 3 letter agencies are monotoring who runs a bitcoin node and they already have a map of everybody or almost everybody. Then they can simply coordinate an attack requesting the ISP to block the traffic or certain home/office or whatever, then they turn on their 100.000 nodes on AWS and the network is theirs...please tell me that's not possible and why.
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1129 sats \ 6 replies \ @nullcount 22 May
Its possible, nodes have a predictable spike in download for every new block
Maybe your node connects via Tor so specific ports and IP address destinations are obscured, but the traffic pattern of downloading about 1-2 MB for every block remains. It just depends on what access the attackers have into your network and how noisy your network is -- whether the new block traffic spike is detectable.
Its not that simple. The ISP can also try to refuse the request, especially if there's no evidence of abuse, etc. Its not illegal to run a node yet!
I know I'd switch ISPs if my current one tried to censor me. ISPs don't want to lose a customer.
Also there are nodes in other countries where USA agencies have no authority.
What do you mean? Bitcoin is not a proof of stake democracy of nodes! Having more nodes does not let you "own the network".
Nodes verify the chain. If the feds want to verify with their own nodes then that's fine! They can even verify it 100,000 times if they want!
I run a node to verify my sats. I also use a handful of trusted nodes to verify my sats (like mempool.space)
If my node went offline AND the trusted nodes I use are also unreachable, or not syncing to the latest block, then I'm not going to suddenly start trusting some other node which might be an attacker because I cannot verify or cross-reference the information they are showing me about my sats.
I'd probably just try to find another way to get my node online and refrain from making BTC transactions in the meantime.
There's an orbital satellite which broadcasts the chain via radio can be intercepted anywhere on the planet with a compatible receiver: https://blockstream.com/satellite/
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5 sats \ 2 replies \ @itsrealfake 22 May
If you're using Mullvad VPN or their DAITA framework, there is some protection against the traffic analysis
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5 sats \ 1 reply \ @88b0c423eb OP 22 May
But then you're trusting mullvad, wouldn't it be better to use tor and i2p?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Alice_and_the_Wonderland 22 May
That approach could reveal the traffic pattern again to ISP. Perhaps enabling YouTube streaming or something similar might help in terms of obfuscating inbound traffic?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @88b0c423eb OP 22 May
Hmm I see your point, and i agree one can be mostly safe with the solutions you propose, but if most average bitcoiners running nodes get blocked, those others that just use it without a node could send tx to other nodes not respecting the consensus rules, right? If that happens most likely there would be a fork as I understand, and would be a war with the state, blackrock saylor wanting the miners to follow their consensus rules....I just want to stress the worst case scenario, maybe that's not how it works.
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105 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullcount 22 May
Ok, let's Assume every node on the BTC network is unreachable. However, there is now an attacker node (or many attacker nodes) which are identical to BTC except for one consensus critical difference, that makes it a shitcoin.
If I send a BTC tx to one of these new altcoin nodes, it may or may not be accepted. Depends on the degree to which these new nodes disagree with the BTC consensus and whether my tx falls within consensus of the altcoin chain.
Best case, the altcoin nodes rejects any txn that would have been valid on BTC.
Worst case, Maybe lots of people were fooled into selling their goods and services for a shitcoin. Once BTC nodes come back online and the attack ends, they realize they "lost BTC" that was paid to them during the attack. In reality, they never received any BTC, only shitcoins. Maybe these people got ripped off so hard that they want to keep using the altcoin just so they "keep their money". Meanwhile those that spent their coins during the attack, only spent shitcoin. Their BTC never changed address.
BTC still exists during the attack, it just has no nodes adding new blocks to the BTC chain or forwarding txns to miners. In the scenario you describe, every node is just blocked, but their historical data is in tact, funds are SAFU.
The source code of BTC implementations also still exists so people could compare the types of txns included in the new altcoin nodes and identify any that would be breaking consensus of BTC.
This kind of attack would be extremely obvious to everyone. Its also extremely unlikely to work since attackers need nearly every node to go offline and stay offline long enough to somehow trick wallet developers, exchanges, block explorers, miners, and other industry leaders to use their new altcoin nodes in order to trick customers who don't run their own node.
IDK, these players all have significant "investments" in BTC. Seems like they have a lot to lose by trying to change consensus and being targeted as an attacker. BTC is not proof-of-stake, owning lots of the token does not give you more control over the network. If anything, it puts you at the will of the network... if every bitcoiner wanted to make saylor's stack worthless, they could just decide to make his coins unspendable. Either by refusing to relay any tx which spends his coin, or changing consensus to disallow it at the block level.
I think the best course of action in this scenario would be to just wait it out and do what you can to bring your own BTC nodes back online.
As others have said, I'm more worried about the non-obvious attacks like KYC and surveillance that manage to get exchanges, etc to do the attack on behalf of the state on their own customers and many customers comply without even seeing it as an attack.
But I like to imagine how these "obvious" disaster scenarios would play out, makes good material for a Bitcoin-themed scifi novel.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @denlillaapan 22 May
You're giving this comment waaaay too much credit
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38 sats \ 2 replies \ @aljaz 22 May
Everyone keeps thinking about some advanced attacks from the government not realizing that the fact that most peoplw obey their laws and follow the rules is what is the threat vector.
They dont need to shut down nodes, they just need to kyc everyone. They need to make sure we self police, lose all anonymity and comply.
The attack on bitcoin was never technical, it was philosophical and enforces through compliance on the edges.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @itsrealfake 22 May
of you're able to get kyc free internet in the US, i am curious how
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @88b0c423eb OP 22 May
Yes, I agree on that specially now that in some countries banks are offering you to "buy" bitcoin that are just digits in your bank account that you can't transfer out, spend it and etc.
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @SwapMarket 22 May
Run several nodes, mainnet, testnet3 and 4, signet, liquid and liquid testnet, plus lightning ones, so you traffic is noisy
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @itsrealfake 22 May
To me, it seems especially important to consider the risk of node runners using standard hardware for instance the raspberry pi. That seems like a supply chain in task risk that is not often considered.
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @88b0c423eb OP 22 May
What do you mean? That the raspberry pi has some kind of backdoor?
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @itsrealfake 22 May
yes, that exactly
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5 sats \ 2 replies \ @88b0c423eb OP 22 May
Could you share more info about that?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @itsrealfake 22 May
2018 link... maybe look for the archive. I probably have a PDF of the original somewhere
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @88b0c423eb OP 22 May
but it's not limited to raspberry pi, any hardware can have that. But the raspberry pi by default uses uboot as "bios" which is opensource, so maybe it's more secure than x86 with IME if you're not using coreboot/libreboot. Do I get it wrong?
On the raspberry pi one can also use tow-boot: https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 22 May
Paradoxically, you're not "paranoid" enough.
Between stored wifi passwords, other cloud based password managers (goog/aapl/msft etc) and every closed source OS, data warehouse, and AI, they have a map of every every network down to the mac address and arp tables.
Between engineered backdoors, vulns, ai they have nearly complete command and control... sprinkle in tweaked RNG's and embedded "management engines" from Intel and AMD, and likely ARM/TI/Broadcom, and they can sweep a majority of corn at anytime.
Even the clickity clack of your keyboard on a dark laptop is recorded via the microphone in your phone if its in the same room, and decoded with great accuracy. Every keystroke on every device you've made for the last 20+ years sits in a db table with your name on it.
The good news is that they have no incentive to open Pandora's box against you, the average nobody, of course. Why destroy the sting operation they've built for the bigger fish like the international threats to natsec? Command and control has been migrated from a dark international banker network to a transparent techno-superpower security state network. It's not perfect, but there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Enjoy your NSA coin without worry and trust the plan. Patriots in control.
(you'll have to decide for yourself whether or not this is sarcasm)
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @gregtonoski 22 May
Nodes in the peer-to-peer Bitcoin network are like moles in Whac-A-Mole game as long as cost of setting up and running a node is minimal. For example, the 100 000 nodes could easily be recreated in another non-AWS cloud environment (including USB dead drops and sneaker net).
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