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Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 10:34:06 -0400
Message-ID: <CAAS2fgSveRa90yV=e+neB53pz-r+ThJvQhAjSf+u9K+cCJwABA@mail.gmail.com>
From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>
To: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Draft BIP for Bloom filtering
Precedence: list

On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net> wrote:
> Anyway, it's trivial to DoS the entire Bitcoin network today. It
> hasn't ever happened. Maybe one day it will, but the only rationale
> people can come up with for such an attack beyond random griefing is

Which happens and is a concern. Altcoins have been attacked on things
we fixed. For example, litecoin nodes were being run out of disk space
through addr.dat flooding.

I think we've been generally fortunate that the level of griefing is
low (though not non-existent).  But part of the reason its been low is
that it's probably harder to DOS attack bitcoin than you believe. In
the reference client a lot of work has gone in to removing attacks
with sublinear cost for the attackers.

That people aren't attacking much now is not an argument to accept a
new vulnerability much less a _normative_ vulnerability in the
protocol.

That it's no big deal even attacked would be a fine argument to me, so
I'll go try to convince myself of that.

> governments,

Please don't put that kind of black helicopter junk in my mouth. I
agree with you the point that these aren't a source of concern for me.