Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
I disagree that 11 is a reasonable value. That's less than 2 hours, which probably wouldn't even last peak trading hours. You want the mempool to be big enough that low-fee transactions introduced during peak hours are still around when there's much less activity (it maximizes miner profit and prevents people/wallets from needing to resubmit after activity has died down). I think you'd want something closer to 72. At 1mb or even 8mb blocks, the memory requirements are pretty reasonable. 20mb blocks and you may have to reconsider that limit. On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 3:03 PM, Raystonn . wrote: > You are right of course. This will work. I like this idea more than > my own proposed fix, as it doesn’t make any big changes to the economics of > the system in the way that burning would have. > > *From:* Gavin Andresen > *Sent:* Tuesday, June 09, 2015 11:25 AM > *To:* Raystonn . > *Cc:* Loi Luu ; Bitcoin Dev > > *Subject:* Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential > solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size > limit > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 1:52 PM, Raystonn . wrote: > >> That does sound good on the surface, but how do we enforce #1 and #2? >> They seem to be unenforceable, as a miner can adjust the size of the memory >> pool in his local source. >> > > It doesn't have to be enforced. As long as a reasonable percentage of hash > rate is following that policy an attacker that tries to flood the network > will fail to prevent normal transaction traffic from going through and will > just end up transferring some wealth to the miners. > > Although the existing default mining policy (which it seems about 70% of > hashpower follows) of setting aside some space for high-priority > transactions regardless of fee might also be enough to cause this attack to > fail in practice. > > -- > -- > Gavin Andresen > > > > -- > > ___ > Bitcoin-development mailing list > Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development > > -- ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
You are right of course. This will work. I like this idea more than my own proposed fix, as it doesn’t make any big changes to the economics of the system in the way that burning would have. From: Gavin Andresen Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 11:25 AM To: Raystonn . Cc: Loi Luu ; Bitcoin Dev Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 1:52 PM, Raystonn . wrote: That does sound good on the surface, but how do we enforce #1 and #2? They seem to be unenforceable, as a miner can adjust the size of the memory pool in his local source. It doesn't have to be enforced. As long as a reasonable percentage of hash rate is following that policy an attacker that tries to flood the network will fail to prevent normal transaction traffic from going through and will just end up transferring some wealth to the miners. Although the existing default mining policy (which it seems about 70% of hashpower follows) of setting aside some space for high-priority transactions regardless of fee might also be enough to cause this attack to fail in practice. -- -- Gavin Andresen -- ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 1:52 PM, Raystonn . wrote: > That does sound good on the surface, but how do we enforce #1 and #2? > They seem to be unenforceable, as a miner can adjust the size of the memory > pool in his local source. > It doesn't have to be enforced. As long as a reasonable percentage of hash rate is following that policy an attacker that tries to flood the network will fail to prevent normal transaction traffic from going through and will just end up transferring some wealth to the miners. Although the existing default mining policy (which it seems about 70% of hashpower follows) of setting aside some space for high-priority transactions regardless of fee might also be enough to cause this attack to fail in practice. -- -- Gavin Andresen -- ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
That does sound good on the surface, but how do we enforce #1 and #2? They seem to be unenforceable, as a miner can adjust the size of the memory pool in his local source. From: Gavin Andresen Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 6:36 AM To: Loi Luu Cc: Raystonn . ; Bitcoin Dev Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit How about this for mitigating this potential attack: 1. Limit the memory pool to some reasonable number of blocks-worth of transactions (e.g. 11) 2. If evicting transactions from the memory pool, prefer to evict transactions that are part of long chains of unconfirmed transactions. 3. Allow blocks to grow in size in times of high transaction demand. The combination of (1) and (2) means an attacker needs to prepare lots of confirmed inputs to pull off the attack. By itself that means they MUST pay transaction fees. (3) further mitigates the attack because it allows miners to just absorb fees that the attacker is throwing at miners. On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 5:33 AM, Loi Luu wrote: The proposed fix is to add a new rule on how fees are handled. Some amount of every fee should be considered as burned and can never be spent. I will propose 50% of the fee here, but there may be better numbers that can be discovered prior to putting this into place. If we'd like miners to continue to collect the same fees after this change, we can suggest the default fee per transaction to be doubled I would propose another practical rule rather than burning 50% of the fee. For example, you can credit 50% of the transaction fee to the next block. Thus, the attacker cannot perform the attack with 0-fee any more, yet you don't have to double the price of the TX fee for the fix. Thanks, Loi Luu. On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 4:07 AM, Raystonn . wrote: When implemented, the block size limit was put in place to prevent the potential for a massive block to be used as an attack to benefit the miner of that block. The theory goes that such a massive block would enrich its miner by delaying other miners who are now busy downloading and validating that huge block. The original miner of that large-block would be free to continue hashing the next block, giving it an advantage. Unfortunately, this block size limit opened a different attack. Prior to the limit, any attempt to spam the network by anyone other than someone mining their own transactions would have been economically unfeasible. As every transaction would have a fee, there would have been a real cost for every minute of spam. The end result would have been a transfer of wealth from spammer to Bitcoin miners, which would have harmed the spammers and encouraged further mining of Bitcoin, a very antifragile outcome. But now we have the block size limit. Things are very different with this feature in place. The beginning of a spam attack on the Bitcoin network will incur transaction fees, just like before. But if spam continues at a rate exceeding the block size limit long enough for transactions to be dropped from mempools, the vast majority of spam transaction fees will never have to be paid. In fact, as real users gain in desperation and pay higher fees to get their transactions through in a timely manner, the spammers will adjust their fees to minimize the cost of the attack and maximize effectiveness. Using this method, they keep their fees at a point that causes most of the spam transactions to be dropped without confirmation (free spam), while forcing a floor for transaction fees. Thus, while spam could be used by attackers to disable the network entirely, by paying high-enough fees to actually fill the blocks with spam, it can also be used by a single entity to force a transaction fee floor. Real users will be forced to pay a transaction fee higher than the majority of the spam to get their transactions confirmed. So this is an effective means for a minority of miners to force higher fees through spam attacks, even in the face of benevolent miners who would not support a higher fee floor by policy. Miners would simply have no way to fix this, as they can only put in the transactions that will fit under the block size limit. In the face of such a spam attack, Bitcoin's credibility and usability would be severely undermined. The block size limit enables this attack, and I now argue for its removal. But we can't just remove it and ignore the problem that it was intended to address. We need a new fix for the large-block problem described in the first paragraph that does not suffer from the dropped-transaction spam-attack problem that is enabled by the block size limit today. My proposal is likely to be controv
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Gavin Andresen wrote: > How about this for mitigating this potential attack: > > 1. Limit the memory pool to some reasonable number of blocks-worth of > transactions (e.g. 11) > 2. If evicting transactions from the memory pool, prefer to evict > transactions that are part of long chains of unconfirmed transactions. > 3. Allow blocks to grow in size in times of high transaction demand. > > I think 2 should just be fee per kB. If the pool is full and a transaction arrives, it has to have a fee per kB that is higher than the lowest transaction in the pool. The effect is that the fee per kB threshold for getting a transaction into the memory pool increases as the attack proceeds. This means that the cost to maintain the attack increases. With replace by fee, the new transaction would have to have a fee that is more than a fixed amount more than the lowest already in the pool. I think the replace by fee code already does this. This prevents transactions with fees that increase by 1 Satoshi at a time being relayed. For allowing large blocks when block space is in high demand, you could limit the average block size. If the average was set to 1MB, the rule could be that blocks must be 2MB or lower and the total size of the a block and the previous 99 must be 100MB or lower. This gives an average of 1MB per block, but allows bursts. -- ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
How about this for mitigating this potential attack: 1. Limit the memory pool to some reasonable number of blocks-worth of transactions (e.g. 11) 2. If evicting transactions from the memory pool, prefer to evict transactions that are part of long chains of unconfirmed transactions. 3. Allow blocks to grow in size in times of high transaction demand. The combination of (1) and (2) means an attacker needs to prepare lots of confirmed inputs to pull off the attack. By itself that means they MUST pay transaction fees. (3) further mitigates the attack because it allows miners to just absorb fees that the attacker is throwing at miners. On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 5:33 AM, Loi Luu wrote: > The proposed fix is to add a new rule on how >> fees are handled. Some amount of every fee should be considered as burned >> and can never be spent. I will propose 50% of the fee here, but there may >> be better numbers that can be discovered prior to putting this into place. >> If we'd like miners to continue to collect the same fees after this >> change, >> we can suggest the default fee per transaction to be doubled > > > I would propose another practical rule rather than burning 50% of the fee. > For example, you can > credit 50% of the transaction fee to the next block. Thus, the attacker > cannot perform > the attack with 0-fee any more, yet you don't have to double the price of > the TX fee for the fix. > > Thanks, > Loi Luu. > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 4:07 AM, Raystonn . wrote: > >> When implemented, the block size limit was put in place to prevent the >> potential for a massive block to be used as an attack to benefit the miner >> of that block. The theory goes that such a massive block would enrich its >> miner by delaying other miners who are now busy downloading and validating >> that huge block. The original miner of that large-block would be free to >> continue hashing the next block, giving it an advantage. >> >> Unfortunately, this block size limit opened a different attack. Prior to >> the limit, any attempt to spam the network by anyone other than someone >> mining their own transactions would have been economically unfeasible. As >> every transaction would have a fee, there would have been a real cost for >> every minute of spam. The end result would have been a transfer of wealth >> from spammer to Bitcoin miners, which would have harmed the spammers and >> encouraged further mining of Bitcoin, a very antifragile outcome. >> >> But now we have the block size limit. Things are very different with this >> feature in place. The beginning of a spam attack on the Bitcoin network >> will incur transaction fees, just like before. But if spam continues at a >> rate exceeding the block size limit long enough for transactions to be >> dropped from mempools, the vast majority of spam transaction fees will >> never >> have to be paid. In fact, as real users gain in desperation and pay >> higher >> fees to get their transactions through in a timely manner, the spammers >> will >> adjust their fees to minimize the cost of the attack and maximize >> effectiveness. Using this method, they keep their fees at a point that >> causes most of the spam transactions to be dropped without confirmation >> (free spam), while forcing a floor for transaction fees. Thus, while spam >> could be used by attackers to disable the network entirely, by paying >> high-enough fees to actually fill the blocks with spam, it can also be >> used >> by a single entity to force a transaction fee floor. Real users will be >> forced to pay a transaction fee higher than the majority of the spam to >> get >> their transactions confirmed. So this is an effective means for a >> minority >> of miners to force higher fees through spam attacks, even in the face of >> benevolent miners who would not support a higher fee floor by policy. >> Miners would simply have no way to fix this, as they can only put in the >> transactions that will fit under the block size limit. >> >> In the face of such a spam attack, Bitcoin's credibility and usability >> would >> be severely undermined. The block size limit enables this attack, and I >> now >> argue for its removal. But we can't just remove it and ignore the problem >> that it was intended to address. We need a new fix for the large-block >> problem described in the first paragraph that does not suffer from the >> dropped-transaction spam-attack problem that is enabled by the block size >> limit today. My proposal is likely to be controversial, and I'm very much >> open to hearing other better proposals. >> >> Large blocks created by a miner as a means to spam other miners out of >> competition is a problem because miners do not pay fees for their own >> transactions when they mine them. They collect the fees they pay. This >> breaks the economic barrier keeping people from spamming the network, as >> the >> spamming is essentially free. The proposed fix is to add a new rule on >> how >> fees
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
> > The proposed fix is to add a new rule on how > fees are handled. Some amount of every fee should be considered as burned > and can never be spent. I will propose 50% of the fee here, but there may > be better numbers that can be discovered prior to putting this into place. > If we'd like miners to continue to collect the same fees after this change, > we can suggest the default fee per transaction to be doubled I would propose another practical rule rather than burning 50% of the fee. For example, you can credit 50% of the transaction fee to the next block. Thus, the attacker cannot perform the attack with 0-fee any more, yet you don't have to double the price of the TX fee for the fix. Thanks, Loi Luu. On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 4:07 AM, Raystonn . wrote: > When implemented, the block size limit was put in place to prevent the > potential for a massive block to be used as an attack to benefit the miner > of that block. The theory goes that such a massive block would enrich its > miner by delaying other miners who are now busy downloading and validating > that huge block. The original miner of that large-block would be free to > continue hashing the next block, giving it an advantage. > > Unfortunately, this block size limit opened a different attack. Prior to > the limit, any attempt to spam the network by anyone other than someone > mining their own transactions would have been economically unfeasible. As > every transaction would have a fee, there would have been a real cost for > every minute of spam. The end result would have been a transfer of wealth > from spammer to Bitcoin miners, which would have harmed the spammers and > encouraged further mining of Bitcoin, a very antifragile outcome. > > But now we have the block size limit. Things are very different with this > feature in place. The beginning of a spam attack on the Bitcoin network > will incur transaction fees, just like before. But if spam continues at a > rate exceeding the block size limit long enough for transactions to be > dropped from mempools, the vast majority of spam transaction fees will > never > have to be paid. In fact, as real users gain in desperation and pay higher > fees to get their transactions through in a timely manner, the spammers > will > adjust their fees to minimize the cost of the attack and maximize > effectiveness. Using this method, they keep their fees at a point that > causes most of the spam transactions to be dropped without confirmation > (free spam), while forcing a floor for transaction fees. Thus, while spam > could be used by attackers to disable the network entirely, by paying > high-enough fees to actually fill the blocks with spam, it can also be used > by a single entity to force a transaction fee floor. Real users will be > forced to pay a transaction fee higher than the majority of the spam to get > their transactions confirmed. So this is an effective means for a minority > of miners to force higher fees through spam attacks, even in the face of > benevolent miners who would not support a higher fee floor by policy. > Miners would simply have no way to fix this, as they can only put in the > transactions that will fit under the block size limit. > > In the face of such a spam attack, Bitcoin's credibility and usability > would > be severely undermined. The block size limit enables this attack, and I > now > argue for its removal. But we can't just remove it and ignore the problem > that it was intended to address. We need a new fix for the large-block > problem described in the first paragraph that does not suffer from the > dropped-transaction spam-attack problem that is enabled by the block size > limit today. My proposal is likely to be controversial, and I'm very much > open to hearing other better proposals. > > Large blocks created by a miner as a means to spam other miners out of > competition is a problem because miners do not pay fees for their own > transactions when they mine them. They collect the fees they pay. This > breaks the economic barrier keeping people from spamming the network, as > the > spamming is essentially free. The proposed fix is to add a new rule on how > fees are handled. Some amount of every fee should be considered as burned > and can never be spent. I will propose 50% of the fee here, but there may > be better numbers that can be discovered prior to putting this into place. > If we'd like miners to continue to collect the same fees after this change, > we can suggest the default fee per transaction to be doubled. Half of > every > fee would be burned and disappear forever, effectively distributing the > value of those bitcoins across the entire money supply. The other half > would be collected by the miner of the block as is done today. This > solution would mean large blocks would cost a significant number of bitcoin > to create, even when all of the transactions are created by the miner of > that block. For this to work, we'd
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 06:06:00PM -0400, Bob McElrath wrote: > There was this wonderful technology invented a few years ago to deal with > spam. It's called Hashcash. All these hacky heuristics like block size are > just dancing around the problem, and the natural solution is already present > in bitcoin: smaller blocks, (down to the point of individual transactions) > each mined. Don't relay things that haven't been mined. As spam or > transaction levels go up, mining targets for submission go up too. You know, you can think of Bitcoin as a system that maintains a ledger for transferrable hashcash... Which means transaction fees *are* paid in hashcash. -- 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org 127ab1d576dc851f374424f1269c4700ccaba2c42d97e778 signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 10:13:10PM +, Patrick Mccorry (PGR) wrote: > With the 0.01mBTC/KB minimum > relay fee and $230 USD/BTC that works out to about $2.3kUSD/GB of ram > > IIRC, the fee is 0.1mBTC, so it's $23/MB (assuming 1,000 tx * 2.3 cents) and > $23k/GB (assuming $23 * 1000, as each $23 is 1mb). Only pointing out as it > highlights thats it's even more expense to do. Mike Hearn reduced the minimum relay fee to 0.01mBTC/KB: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3305 -- 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org 127ab1d576dc851f374424f1269c4700ccaba2c42d97e778 signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
There was this wonderful technology invented a few years ago to deal with spam. It's called Hashcash. All these hacky heuristics like block size are just dancing around the problem, and the natural solution is already present in bitcoin: smaller blocks, (down to the point of individual transactions) each mined. Don't relay things that haven't been mined. As spam or transaction levels go up, mining targets for submission go up too. Of course this is a pretty serious redesign of bitcoin, and I'm not offering a concrete proposal at this time (but have one in the works, and I'd like to see others). I call the parameters of these hacky heuristics "Consensus Threatening Quantities" (CTQs) because changing them induces a hard fork. Bitcoin is full of them (block time, block size, target difficulty, retarget time, etc) and bitcoin would do well to face difficult redesign questions head on, and remove them entirely. (Proposal to appear...) On June 8, 2015 5:44:43 PM EDT, Peter Todd wrote: >On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 02:33:54PM -0700, Raystonn . wrote: >> > the attack would be expensive. >> >> For attacks being waged to destroy Bitcoin by filling all blocks with >spam transactions, the attack succeeds when the attacker is well >funded. This gives well-funded private and/or public entities the >means to destroy Bitcoin if they desire. This is only true after the >block size limit was implemented. Without the block size limit, the >spam doesn’t harm Bitcoin. It simply enriches miners at the cost of >the spammers, which is a nicely antifragile quality. > >There will always be a blocksize limit based on technological >considerations - the network has a finite bandwidth limit. > >Without a blocksize limit the attacker would just flood the network >until the bandwidth usage became so great that consensus would fail, >rendering Bitcoin both worthless, and insecure. > >The worst an attacker flooding the network with transactions with a >blocksize limit can do is raise costs, without harming security. Keep >in >mind, that at some point it'd be cheaper to just 51% attack the >network. >Based on the current block subsidy of 25BTC/MB that's at the point >where >transaction fees are 25mBTC/KB, which corresponds to <$2/tx fees - not >that cheap, but still quite affordable for a large percentage of >Bitcoin's users right now. And that's the *absolute worst-case* attack >possible. > >-- >'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org >127ab1d576dc851f374424f1269c4700ccaba2c42d97e778 > > > > >-- > > >!DSPAM:55760d26244955859016385! > > > > >___ >Bitcoin-development mailing list >Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development > > >!DSPAM:55760d26244955859016385! -- ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 02:33:54PM -0700, Raystonn . wrote: > > the attack would be expensive. > > For attacks being waged to destroy Bitcoin by filling all blocks with spam > transactions, the attack succeeds when the attacker is well funded. This > gives well-funded private and/or public entities the means to destroy Bitcoin > if they desire. This is only true after the block size limit was > implemented. Without the block size limit, the spam doesn’t harm Bitcoin. > It simply enriches miners at the cost of the spammers, which is a nicely > antifragile quality. There will always be a blocksize limit based on technological considerations - the network has a finite bandwidth limit. Without a blocksize limit the attacker would just flood the network until the bandwidth usage became so great that consensus would fail, rendering Bitcoin both worthless, and insecure. The worst an attacker flooding the network with transactions with a blocksize limit can do is raise costs, without harming security. Keep in mind, that at some point it'd be cheaper to just 51% attack the network. Based on the current block subsidy of 25BTC/MB that's at the point where transaction fees are 25mBTC/KB, which corresponds to <$2/tx fees - not that cheap, but still quite affordable for a large percentage of Bitcoin's users right now. And that's the *absolute worst-case* attack possible. -- 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org 127ab1d576dc851f374424f1269c4700ccaba2c42d97e778 signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
> the attack would be expensive. For attacks being waged to destroy Bitcoin by filling all blocks with spam transactions, the attack succeeds when the attacker is well funded. This gives well-funded private and/or public entities the means to destroy Bitcoin if they desire. This is only true after the block size limit was implemented. Without the block size limit, the spam doesn’t harm Bitcoin. It simply enriches miners at the cost of the spammers, which is a nicely antifragile quality. For attacks being waged to push up minimum fees for the benefit of miners, by filling the mempool with enough spam transactions with the floor fee to cover a new block every time another block is discovered, they stand to gain. Whatever fees they are paying, real transactions will have to pay more to get through. It can be a net gain depending on how many miners are participating. From: Patrick Mccorry (PGR) Sent: Monday, June 08, 2015 2:21 PM To: Raystonn . Cc: Bitcoin Dev Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit If I were a miner under this attack, I would just use the spam to fill up blocks alongside normal transactions maximising my profit. You are assuming here that you can identify which transactions are spam, and which are not, and then segregate the spam into a separate channels of transactions for inclusion on a 50/50 basis alongside other transactions. There is no guarantee you will be able to identify those transactions. Sure, if you can do that, then the easy fix is just to put them into a lower class channel of transactions that guarantee no pressure on the non-spam transactions. But it's just not possible to do this in any meaningful way. If you wanted to try, it would certainly add quite a bit of cost and complexity on the miner's side, and you aren't going to get anything other than the simple spam that comes from the same set of addresses. Well it depends how the transactions spam - if you do a huge link of transactions (one after another, with the total bitcoins "sent" being reduced by a fee each time) this is easily identifiable - if you were to do it using unlinked transactions then this would require 2x the setup (do a lot of mixing to get 1 million unlinked outputs and then commence attack) which doubles the cost of the attack. If I were to spam a lot of transactions to fill the memory pool it would cost $120 every 10 minutes You need to account for the transactions coming from real users. Every real transaction is approximately one less spam transaction you need to fill the blocks. I was suggesting the cost of an adversary to send the spam - if he did manage to fill the entire block each time that's the maximum charge. Of course the costs get spread out if normal transactions are included. there is no memory pool cap currently Real hardware does not have an infinite amount of RAM. Memory pool sizes cannot grow unbounded. Some transactions with insufficient fees do get dropped today after many hours. That's true that's why I used 250mb as an example to cost $30k. Cheap laptops today (around £300) come with 6gb ram - so the attack would be expensive. I do doubt the miners codes probably are not prepared for an attack of this type - but it is really expensive to pull off from what I can see. Sent from my iPhone On 8 Jun 2015, at 22:14, Raystonn . wrote: If I were a miner under this attack, I would just use the spam to fill up blocks alongside normal transactions maximising my profit. You are assuming here that you can identify which transactions are spam, and which are not, and then segregate the spam into a separate channels of transactions for inclusion on a 50/50 basis alongside other transactions. There is no guarantee you will be able to identify those transactions. Sure, if you can do that, then the easy fix is just to put them into a lower class channel of transactions that guarantee no pressure on the non-spam transactions. But it's just not possible to do this in any meaningful way. If you wanted to try, it would certainly add quite a bit of cost and complexity on the miner's side, and you aren't going to get anything other than the simple spam that comes from the same set of addresses. If I were to spam a lot of transactions to fill the memory pool it would cost $120 every 10 minutes You need to account for the transactions coming from real users. Every real transaction is approximately one less spam transaction you need to fill the blocks. there is no memory pool cap currently Real hardware does not have an infinite amount of RAM. Memory pool sizes cannot grow unbounded. Some transactions with insufficient fees do get dropped today after many hours. -Original Message- From: Patric
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 02:14:01PM -0700, Raystonn . wrote: > > there is no memory pool cap currently > > Real hardware does not have an infinite amount of RAM. Memory pool sizes > cannot grow unbounded. Some transactions with insufficient fees do get > dropped today after many hours. Actually they don't, which is an unfortunate problem with the existing mempool implementation; the only way a transaction can be removed from a Bitcoin Core mempool is through it getting mined, double-spent, or the node restarting. The protection that we have against that attack is that you need access to a lot of bitcoins to pay enough fees. With the 0.01mBTC/KB minimum relay fee and $230 USD/BTC that works out to about $2.3kUSD/GB of ram consumed, and furthermore, actually getting that many transactions to propagate over the network is non-trivial. (no, I'm not going to tell you how) The obvious solution is to cap the size of the mempool and evict transactions lowest fee/KB first, but if you do that they you (further) break zeroconf security. On the other hand, if you don't break zeroconf security an attacker can prevent reasonable fee transactions from propagating. I probably should get around to fixing this... -- 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org 127ab1d576dc851f374424f1269c4700ccaba2c42d97e778 signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit
> If I were a miner under this attack, I would just use the spam to fill up > blocks alongside normal transactions maximising my profit. You are assuming here that you can identify which transactions are spam, and which are not, and then segregate the spam into a separate channels of transactions for inclusion on a 50/50 basis alongside other transactions. There is no guarantee you will be able to identify those transactions. Sure, if you can do that, then the easy fix is just to put them into a lower class channel of transactions that guarantee no pressure on the non-spam transactions. But it's just not possible to do this in any meaningful way. If you wanted to try, it would certainly add quite a bit of cost and complexity on the miner's side, and you aren't going to get anything other than the simple spam that comes from the same set of addresses. > If I were to spam a lot of transactions to fill the memory pool it would > cost $120 every 10 minutes You need to account for the transactions coming from real users. Every real transaction is approximately one less spam transaction you need to fill the blocks. > there is no memory pool cap currently Real hardware does not have an infinite amount of RAM. Memory pool sizes cannot grow unbounded. Some transactions with insufficient fees do get dropped today after many hours. -Original Message- From: Patrick Mccorry (PGR) Sent: Monday, June 08, 2015 1:28 PM To: Raystonn . Cc: Bitcoin Dev Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] New attack identified and potential solution described: Dropped-transaction spam attack against the block size limit Please correct me if I'm wrong (hopefully understood it). I don't think normal users would need to pay a higher fee - as miners can just ignore the spam (since they will all be linked). If I were to spam a lot of transactions to fill the memory pool it would cost $120 every 10 minutes (assuming 4,000 tx can fit inside a block and 3 cents per transaction), anything exceeding that may be considered "spam" - although I don't know if it would be "free" as the miner will eventually claim all the fees, delayed payment is probably a better way to describe it. IIRC, there is no memory pool cap currently. To spam 1 million transactions would cost $30k which would take up approx 250 blocks (around 250mb) which is around 42 hours to process. I think the memory pool can handle this data today (someone more knowledgeable can check this for me) - so the attack is v.expensive to carry out. A good way to prevent this spamming the memory pool is to only accept up to a 'x' length of 0-confirmed transactions to make it more difficult to pull off (not impossible). If I were a miner under this attack, I would just use the spam to fill up blocks alongside normal transactions maximising my profit. Sent from my iPhone > On 8 Jun 2015, at 21:09, Raystonn . wrote: > > When implemented, the block size limit was put in place to prevent the > potential for a massive block to be used as an attack to benefit the miner > of that block. The theory goes that such a massive block would enrich its > miner by delaying other miners who are now busy downloading and validating > that huge block. The original miner of that large-block would be free to > continue hashing the next block, giving it an advantage. > > Unfortunately, this block size limit opened a different attack. Prior to > the limit, any attempt to spam the network by anyone other than someone > mining their own transactions would have been economically unfeasible. As > every transaction would have a fee, there would have been a real cost for > every minute of spam. The end result would have been a transfer of wealth > from spammer to Bitcoin miners, which would have harmed the spammers and > encouraged further mining of Bitcoin, a very antifragile outcome. > > But now we have the block size limit. Things are very different with this > feature in place. The beginning of a spam attack on the Bitcoin network > will incur transaction fees, just like before. But if spam continues at a > rate exceeding the block size limit long enough for transactions to be > dropped from mempools, the vast majority of spam transaction fees will > never > have to be paid. In fact, as real users gain in desperation and pay > higher > fees to get their transactions through in a timely manner, the spammers > will > adjust their fees to minimize the cost of the attack and maximize > effectiveness. Using this method, they keep their fees at a point that > causes most of the spam transactions to be dropped without confirmation > (free spam), while forcing a floor for transaction fees. Thus, while spam > could be used by attackers to disable the network entirely, by paying > high-enough f
