Return-Path: Received: from smtp2.osuosl.org (smtp2.osuosl.org [140.211.166.133]) by lists.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 18EC2C002D for ; Mon, 9 Jan 2023 22:18:59 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp2.osuosl.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CF11840129 for ; Mon, 9 Jan 2023 22:18:58 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Filter: OpenDKIM Filter v2.11.0 smtp2.osuosl.org CF11840129 Authentication-Results: smtp2.osuosl.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key, unprotected) header.d=messagingengine.com header.i=@messagingengine.com header.a=rsa-sha256 header.s=fm3 header.b=lilR8DKN X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at osuosl.org X-Spam-Flag: NO X-Spam-Score: -2.602 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.602 tagged_above=-999 required=5 tests=[BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW=-0.7, SPF_HELO_PASS=-0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001] autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no Received: from smtp2.osuosl.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp2.osuosl.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id DAY2aZf2eG7c for ; Mon, 9 Jan 2023 22:18:57 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: domain auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.8.0 DKIM-Filter: OpenDKIM Filter v2.11.0 smtp2.osuosl.org 0C288400E2 Received: from wout4-smtp.messagingengine.com (wout4-smtp.messagingengine.com [64.147.123.20]) by smtp2.osuosl.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0C288400E2 for ; Mon, 9 Jan 2023 22:18:56 +0000 (UTC) Received: from compute3.internal (compute3.nyi.internal [10.202.2.43]) by mailout.west.internal (Postfix) with ESMTP id DBB1E3200920 for ; Mon, 9 Jan 2023 17:18:55 -0500 (EST) Received: from mailfrontend2 ([10.202.2.163]) by compute3.internal (MEProxy); Mon, 09 Jan 2023 17:18:56 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d= messagingengine.com; h=cc:content-type:date:date:feedback-id :feedback-id:from:from:in-reply-to:message-id:mime-version :reply-to:sender:subject:subject:to:to:x-me-proxy:x-me-proxy :x-me-sender:x-me-sender:x-sasl-enc; s=fm3; t=1673302735; x= 1673389135; bh=LjEJBAdkLk6Pt19o/hDmj80ZsB/QpU+dcreiViIGiKA=; b=l ilR8DKNg7jSbuKyW+m2/rCsb/6ctUvKbqUiJzqTYCvxHWSFuPtaUDBrkw5lv6Ubu XE8vvH11jYMirLV+5OBdNLM9xtECHMYuwYhqnN4VMphGy57HWYidNVbujBcTWa1K pQBAG7ZhxIRo/wa6y+eMtz+O/4usoxNW48WUJyl/qwYLKkxxvwazJNyPNnRZ1Npn qjY/CLVrmCw6f6OjsU5pee+V8O8mpMBBYH+DA2pqTRnXP3CLSRb012SRD4wi0fJO eY1Xh7s8rtoVeOcM6fvMrtGLnKSEauaAFRofFmCEWX44u4yafNlX0mHr+v1WQCgN vyPt5EjbnPSRcTmD3h+fw== X-ME-Sender: X-ME-Received: X-ME-Proxy-Cause: gggruggvucftvghtrhhoucdtuddrgedvhedrkeeigdduheehucetufdoteggodetrfdotf fvucfrrhhofhhilhgvmecuhfgrshhtofgrihhlpdfqfgfvpdfurfetoffkrfgpnffqhgen uceurghilhhouhhtmecufedttdenucenucfjughrpeffhffvuffkgggtugesghdtreertd dtvdenucfhrhhomheprfgvthgvrhcuvfhougguuceophgvthgvsehpvghtvghrthhouggu rdhorhhgqeenucggtffrrghtthgvrhhnpeeitedvffffkefhhefgveffueefkeefkeelke efkeektedvtdffudejueelleelheenucffohhmrghinheplhhinhhugihfohhunhgurght ihhonhdrohhrghdpghhithhhuhgsrdgtohhmpdhpvghtvghrthhouggurdhorhhgnecuve hluhhsthgvrhfuihiivgeptdenucfrrghrrghmpehmrghilhhfrhhomhepphgvthgvsehp vghtvghrthhouggurdhorhhg X-ME-Proxy: Feedback-ID: i525146e8:Fastmail Received: by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTPA for ; Mon, 9 Jan 2023 17:18:54 -0500 (EST) Received: by localhost (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 88F4C5F823; Mon, 9 Jan 2023 17:18:52 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2023 17:18:52 -0500 From: Peter Todd To: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="la5V5A5ZzzlCnQTx" Content-Disposition: inline Subject: [bitcoin-dev] Why Full-RBF Makes DoS Attacks on Multiparty Protocols Significantly More Expensive X-BeenThere: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list List-Id: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2023 22:18:59 -0000 --la5V5A5ZzzlCnQTx Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I was reminded recently that while Suhas Daftuar cited tx-pinning as a reas= on to remove full-rbf, he neglected to mention that tx-pinning greatly increas= es the cost of attacks on multi-party protocols. Him (rhetorically?) asking(4): "Does fullrbf offer any benefits other than breaking zeroconf business practices?" =2E..has caused a lot of confusion by implying that there were no benefits.= So I'm writing this to set the record straight and provide an easily cited explanation as to why full-rbf - even with tx-pinning - is a valuable improvement for multi-party protocols like coinjoins that rely on transacti= ons containing multiple inputs exclusively controlled(1) by different parties. tl;dr: without full-rbf people can intentionally and unintentionally DoS at= tack multi-party protocols by double-spending their inputs with low-fee txs, hol= ding up progress until that low-fee tx gets mined. This could take days, weeks, = or even worse. Modulo intentional tx-pinning, full-RBF fixes this by ensuring = that a higher fee transaction gets mined in a reasonable amount of time so the protocol makes forward progress. And as for tx-pinning, exploiting it is ve= ry expensive, so full-rbf still makes the situation much better than the status quo. # The Double-Spend DoS Attack on Multi-Party, Multi-Input, Transactions If a protocol constructs transactions containing multiple inputs exclusively controlled by different parties, those parties can intentionally and unintentionally double-spend those inputs in alternate transactions. For example, in a Wasabi coinjoin any one of the hundreds of participants could sign and broadcast a transaction spending their input. If they do that at t= he right time, as much as ~100% of the hashing power may see the double-spend first, prior to the intended coinjoin transaction. This in fact does happen regularly in production to Wasabi coinjoins, probably due to people accidentally running different wallets at the same time using the same seed= , as well as people importing their seeds into alternative wallets. By itself this isn't a significant problem: Wasabi coinjoins are a two phase protocol, and, like any multi-step, multi-party protocol, they have to deal with the fact that participants in the protocol may fail to complete all the steps necessary for a transaction to be completed. It's very common for one= or more parties in a Wasabi coinjoin to fail to complete both steps of the protocol, and a majority of Wasabi coinjoin rounds fail. Wasabi deals with = this economically by (temporarily or ~permanently) blacklisting UTXOs that faile= d to complete a round, making DoS attacks expensive by forcing the attacker to t= ie up funds/create new UTXOs. Similarly, in use-cases such as multi-party-funded Lightning channels(5), an attacker can always DoS attack the protocol by participating in a channel o= pen, and then failing to allow payments to be routed through it. The solution is again to use economics to ensure the attack is sufficiently costly. However, under the right circumstances double-spends are an unusually power= ful DoS attack on multi-party, multi-input, transaction. When mempool demand is high, low fee transactions can take arbitrarily long to get mined. Bitcoin = has seen periods of mempool demand where low-fee transactions would take *month= s* to get mined. Transaction expiry does not solve this problem, as anyone can rebroadcast transactions at any time. In these circumstances without transaction replacement a multi-party transaction such as a Wasabi coinjoin could be held up indefinitely by a low-fee double-spend. ## How Full-RBF Mitigates the Double-Spend DoS Attack Modulo tx-pinning, full-rbf mitigates the double-spend DoS attack in a very straightforward way: the low fee transaction is replaced by the higher fee transaction, resulting in the latter getting mined in a reasonable amount of time and the protocol making forward progress. Note that the converse is not a useful attack: if the attacker broadcasts a high-fee double spend, higher than the intended multi-party transaction, the transaction will get mined in a reasonable amount of time, costing the atta= cker money and the defender nothing beyond wasted time. Multi-party protocols al= ways have the property that attackers can spend money to DoS attack by creating = more UTXOs/identities/etc, so this isn't any worse than the status quo! ## Transaction Pinning So what about transaction pinning? The term actually refers to a few differ= ent techniques that can make it difficult/expensive to fee-bump a transaction. We're interested in the techniques relevant to replacements, namely exploitation of: 1. BIP-125 RBF Rule #3: a replacement transaction is required to pay the higher absolute fee (not just fee rate) than the sum of fees paid by all transactions being replaced. 2. BIP-125 RBF Rule #5: the number of transactions replaced at one time must not exceed 100. Note that this rule only exists due to limitations of the existing Bitcoin Core implementation; it has absolute no economic rational = and should be removed by either improving the implementation's scalability issu= es, or rejecting transactions that could make a transaction unreplaceable(2). Exploiting either rule is expensive. To exploit rule #3 the attacker has to broadcast fee-paying transactions paying a total amount of fees higher than= the defender is willing to pay. Since transactions don't expire, in almost all circumstances those transactions will eventually be mined, costing the atta= cker much more money than they would have spent without full-rbf. To exploit rule #5, the attacker has to broadcast 100x more fee-paying transactions than they otherwise would have. As with rule #3, those transactions will almost always eventually be mined, costing the attacker significantly more money than they would have spent without full-rbf. And, = as mentioned above(2), rule #5 is merely an artifact of the existing implementation which can and should be fixed. The only avenue for an attacker to avoid transaction pinning costs is amortisation: reusing the extra transactions required for pinning for other attacks/other purposes. But of course, amortisation is *already* a potent c= ost reduction strategy for attacks on multi-party protocols such as coinjoin, so the existence of transaction pinning doesn't appreciably change the situati= on. Again, there are mitigations such as requiring participants to post nLockTi= me'd fee-paying transactions(3), and limiting attacks to parties who are heavily invested in Bitcoin for other reasons is a valuable improvement on the stat= us quo. # Conclusion Far from not "offering any benefits other than breaking zeroconf business practices"(4), full-rbf clearly improves Bitcoin for multi-party protocols, among the many other reasons to adopt it. # Footnotes 1. What do I mean by "exclusively controlled"? Let's compare coinjoin, to an ordinary single-payer Lightning channel. In a coinjoin, the goal is to g= et a transaction mined containing multiple inputs from different parties. Eac= h of these inputs is individually, exclusively controlled by a single party: without the cooperation of any other party that input that be spend. Thi= s is unlike an ordinary single-payer Lightning channel: while the commitment transactions are multi-party transactions, the multisig transaction outp= uts involved are *jointly* controlled by both parties, and thus neither part= y can spend it without the cooperation of the other at some point. 2. [bitcoin-dev] Removing BIP-125 Rule #5 Pinning with the Always-Replaceab= le Invariant, https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-= November/021175.html 3. [bitcoin-dev] Using Full-RBF to fix BIP-125 Rule #3 Pinning with nLockTi= me, https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-November/02= 1176.html 4. https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/26438 5. There are even more exotic proposed Lightning-related protocols where a = failure of transaction replacement can cause the loss of funds. I'm not covering those scenarios because they have such strong requirements - beyond what full-rbf offers - that the technical community does not have consensus t= hat these proposed protocols are even viable. --=20 https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org --la5V5A5ZzzlCnQTx Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCgAdFiEE0RcYcKRzsEwFZ3N5Lly11TVRLzcFAmO8ksYACgkQLly11TVR LzfjKxAAiF/kS5V8DtdK0Ky3B4dbJetjJA8/S7saDbiQCCUyXyeORp7QiWMmxYjR 8++MZVNR13UruEMyC4yZY5RwgKHI81BgDdvJzq6ZlHmesvbUJOic7IgBGSWeKIla JUjXdfxj1kaPStJ0tGWNtnUfH5BmvvPUTjrqxbVn427/jn24BnUtw+PyU4c+qMsb M9s21dRBMATzVyL6788TEjMZl8SzzhN4sx05vwscNAKxa7WomV5wklpFmJkwNb8G OmN29E7cmOXtGAndl58Dq/OGXlIV1SU3fVza9DQgYwWW59ZVHcNo64b9iZo6U78L WpGp/yFxrUYLsg0zkO88RC154A4+osOKGXQKUqJ9axcdEw7xhojfNXCg+gL1Z27J PJ4bMUgXNEqa3MnSyAx/6L9AOm2Xy/AHHNMX/8Fei+7+veR8ZWqJbx1ca8x5iz7z Ym6OcMxtMTRa8iJ/dDTH9d36q5h7+Hhbs7azhlUaCK1GRvPvQEcdKwPC873uI/sP fbhlq2hkY50OCKx25nqHaCtMbZ51JFg9kmmLYOnm/uMDZTwRbp4ck0wXaJIwnk/P II/C4NReECN5ZXYuNtSL2rWuRIECKq1qrMDemdJuOuYKtS4XicUpYeTWjNo7fFTi zyNyJFkC9MHXjxIkPDCX3zA9bXJKec10NJgQdsBe2QuUlzCwQB8= =UmRX -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --la5V5A5ZzzlCnQTx--