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bluesky - Re: distributed immutable namespace

bluesky AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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  • From: Adam Back <adam AT cypherspace.org>
  • To: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems <bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: distributed immutable namespace
  • Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 22:43:21 -0400


It would seem that someone could DoS the namespace as you
describe. It sounds like this attack would also work on
other namespace proposals, so is perhaps fairly general.

What could we do about it? Charge real ecash would be a
satisfying answer, but then we have boot strap problems,
as there isn't one yet, and global e-cash systems robust
against being themselves censored are probably an even
harder problem.

Perhaps you could use hashcash to pay for your name. name
creations are infrequent enough that users could put up
with involve a reasonably expensive computation. Users of
names could also submit hashcash on the names they use so
that popular names get higher valued hashcash.

Also you could probably retain auditability if you allowed
policies of dropping the lowest valued names in event of a
flood.

None of this prevents attacks, just makes them a little
more expensive.

An is-a-person credential and a limited quota per-person
might be nice too, but that has it's own boot strap
problems, and imports trust on the credential issuer.

Adam

On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 06:22:35PM -0800, hal AT finney.org wrote:
> Adam Back writes:
> > The idea is to try to create a global namespace
> > collaboratively maintained by servers which audit each
> > others behavior and compensate for rogue behavior in
> > collaboration with client name server protocols.
>
> That's an interesting idea, but isn't there a danger that a first-come
> first-served policy will result in someone writing a script to reserve
> all one-letter, two-letter, three-letter words etc. as fast as he can
> generate keys?




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