On Sat, May 24, 2014 at 5:57 AM, Ashley Holman <dsc...@gmail.com> wrote: > * As far as I can tell, this shouldn't change any game theory or incentives > because nodes still receive blocks exactly as they do now, just sooner. The > difference is, invalid blocks that meet the PoW will be broadcast to > everyone, but this is nothing new since someone can peer with you and send > you an invalid block already. Network DoS should not be a possibility since > it is very expensive to make invalid blocks that meet network PoW.
The difference is that with cut-through forwarding of blocks, a sufficiently motivated attacker (being willing to blow 25BTC's worth of electricity on the effort) can subjugate the entire Bitcoin network to its DoS attack, rather than having to connect to every node individually and then still have those individual nodes reject that invalid block without relaying any knowledge of its existence. An attack could also take the form of a block body that never arrives - a sort of teergrube attack, where the goal is to get the network mining empty block upon empty block on top of that valid-PoW header whose body never arrives. It doesn't have to be with an explicitly invalid block. Could one mitigate such attacks by allowing nodes to send a message to the effect of, "Oops, I know that header i just sent is valid PoW, but I'd like you to forget about it - I think its body is invalid"? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Accelerate Dev Cycles with Automated Cross-Browser Testing - For FREE Instantly run your Selenium tests across 300+ browser/OS combos. Get unparalleled scalability from the best Selenium testing platform available Simple to use. Nothing to install. Get started now for free." http://p.sf.net/sfu/SauceLabs _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
