[tor-talk] Deanonymisation of clients in Bitcoin P2P network

[Mirimir]

On 11/27/2014 01:13 AM, grarpamp wrote:
> http://orbilu.uni.lu/handle/10993/18679
> Biryukov, Khovratovich, Pustogarov
> Nov-2014

<SNIP>

> different users behind the same NAT. We also show that a natural
> countermeasure of using Tor or other anonymity services can be cut-off
> by abusing anti-DoS countermeasures of the bitcoin network. Our
> attacks require only a few machines and have been experimentally
> verified. We propose several countermeasures to mitigate these new
> attacks.

Well "abusing anti-DoS countermeasures of the bitcoin network" here
involves hitting every Bitcoin server with malformed messages from every
Tor exit. Not at all elegant ;)

But even so, people using Bitcoin clients via Tor are safe as long as
they resist the temptation to connect directly when Tor is cut off.

The paper is at <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.7418v2.pdf>.