[cryptography] attacks against bitcoin

[Ian G]

On 12/06/11 8:16 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>
> How safe is the bitcoin cryptosystem and the communication network
> against targeted attacks?

It depends on what the intention or objective of the attack is.  And that 
depends on the threat actor.

For example, a phishing threat actor would be looking to steal money.  
Whereas the state actor would be looking to figure out who is doing what, 
to attack out of band.  A competitor would look to attack the reputation, 
by e.g., disruption to reliability or mud flinging.  A retailer / consumer 
would look to dump liability.  Insiders would look to extract rents.

Each of these interests from diverse parties result in different  
attractivenesses to different threat scenarios, many of them uncorrelated.  
Some of the scenarios and assets can be protected ("mitigated") by 
tech/crypto, but typically most cannot, and require non-tech mitigations.

To go any distance on this, you'd rapidly end up doing a major risk  
analysis, a lot of work.

The alternative is to start from the classical CIA, etc.  The problem with 
that is it that it is someone else's threat model, not yours.  You really 
don't want to discover who that someone is after you've built your system, 
it'll so ruin your appetite.

iang

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