Researchers Discover Tor Nodes Spying on the Network
According to a series of tests, over 100 malicious Hidden Service Directories (HSDiers) — nodes in the Tor Network that act as introductory points — have been found snooping on the Tor Network. Discovering Malicious Tor Nodes. Researchers Amirali Sanatinia and Guevara Noubir first discovered the snooping services. A collection of their work will be....
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According to researchers at the University of Bern, the presence of faulty or malicious nodes on the Ripple network could have “devastating effects.” Researchers from the University of Bern have released a report claiming Ripple’s consensus protocol “ensures neither safety nor liveness.”In a blog posted yesterday from the university’s Cryptology and Data Security Research Group, researchers Christian Cachin, Amores-Sesar, and Jovana Mićić released an analysis alleging the payment firm’s consensus protocol could allow users to potentially “double-spend a token” and halt the processing of....
Kristov Atlas has developed a quick tool called TorBan which can warn of a Bitcoin-over-Tor de-anonymization attack, called the "Luxembourg Attack." The "Luxembourg Attack," first described by University of Luxembourg researchers Ivan Pustogarov and Alex Biryukov earlier this year, involves the use of thousands of Bitcoin nodes and a handful of controlled Tor exit nodes to "de-anonymize" users using Bitcoin over Tor. The Luxembourg research paper, titled "Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea" detailed the potential attack. The Bitcoin network has built-in denial-of-service (DoS) attack....
Days after researchers described an attack that could reveal the identities of individuals who used bitcoin over the Tor anonymity network, a privacy advocate has developed a tool to monitor the occurrence of that attack. The tool, TorBan, is a website that gives information about the Tor exit nodes currently connected to the bitcoin network. If all the connections are fresh, users should be wary of a privacy-invading attack like the one described by the Luxembourg researchers, TorBan's creator Kristov Atlas said, adding: "If you see a bunch of new nodes never seen before, and all of the....
Anonymous Tor-enabled Bitcoin nodes normally make up as much as 25% of totally reachable Bitcoin nodes. According to the latest data from node monitoring resource Bitnodes, Tor-enabled Bitcoin (BTC) nodes are back to normal following almost a full-swing crash in early January 2021. As of Jan. 13, the number of reachable Tor-based BTC nodes amounted to 2,581, up from as few as 122 nodes on Jan. 9.Based on Bitnodes data, Tor-enabled Bitcoin nodes make up a significant part of the Bitcoin network, normally accounting for about 25% of totally reachable running nodes. According to the latest....
It's well known that bitcoin is designed as a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) network. However, what's often lost in translation is the sheer amount of machinery that is needed to maintain this global infrastructure. For example, in order to validate and relay transactions, bitcoin requires more than a network of miners processing transactions, it must broadcast messages across a network using 'nodes'. This is the first step in the transaction process that results in a block confirmation. To function to its full potential, the bitcoin network must not only provide an avenue for....