>> (p.1)
    Author Topic: Bitcoin Payment Protocol discussion continued  (Read 1469 times)
    Hyena (OP)
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    October 09, 2013, 10:17:43 AM
    Last edit: October 10, 2013, 08:23:50 PM by Hyena
     #1

    I created this topic because the original Payment Protocol FAQ (https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/300809.0) was locked and people were asking for a poll anyway.

    The major concerns seem to be:
    * Man In The Middle attacks
    * The fact that Certificate Authorities in their current form and function are not cool
    * Bitcoin's Official client should be neutral to any commercial uses and entities

    Discuss... I start:

    Fact 1: MITM attacks happen rarely.
    Fact 2: MITM attacks are pretty much useless when the victim sees it happening.
    ------------------------------------
    What's the worst thing that could happen when getting MITM attacked during BTC tx?
    - You send your coins to a wrong address.

    What is bitcoin best for?
    - Making small transactions.

    Conclusion:
    Don't send a large sum of money in a single transaction. Instead, make many small transactions that you can afford to lose in case of this rarely occurring MITM attack. When the other party receives this small transaction, it should somehow communicate to you "Keep going, you're sending to the right address". The communication part should obviously use another channel based on some existing trust. If you know you can trust blockchain.info then you can just check the receiver on that site, trusting the CA used by blockchain.info.

    But here's another idea:
    How to memorize a bitcoin address if it is not a vanity address and contains random characters? Extract the address into the format of common words similarly to what brain wallets do. The computer should then draw a deterministic picture of the address, so that all the used common words would be drawn on the picture.

    Hypothesis: if you memorize the picture you are likely to notice if suddenly there is an ELEPHANT instead of a HORSE on that picture. When you see such thing you know that you're sending your money to someone else. Vanity key mining would then become a whole new thing: for example one wants to have a picture of its public key that has 7 loads of gold on it Cheesy

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