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bluesky - Re: weak secure IDs

bluesky AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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  • From: Zooko <zooko AT zooko.com>
  • To: "Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems" <bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: weak secure IDs
  • Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 05:53:15 -0400



Wei Dai wrote:
>
> The Chord project proposed using hashes of IP addresses as weak secure
> IDs, on the assumption that an attacker controls limited number of IP
> addresses. Here I propose an alternative weak secure ID scheme, on the
> assumption that the attacker has limited CPU power. This seems to be a
> safer assumption in the long run, since with IPv6 an attacker can easily
> have control over more IP addresses than the number of honest nodes.

Indeed, by cracking a box or bribing a sysadmin at BBN (or whoever owns their
IP address space now), you can *already* have more IP addresses than the
number of honest nodes.

I like your idea for incrementally more expensive IDs.

However I don't like the idea, in general, of allowing nodes to cause damage
but attempting to constrain the number of such nodes. Have you seen "The
Sybil Attack" by John Doceur? [1]

I don't at all agree with the conclusions, but he makes a good argument.

Regards,

Zooko

[1] http://www.cs.rice.edu/Conferences/IPTPS02/101.pdf




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