What if dev-team is compromised?

[gmaxwell]

In all seriousness though, I'd like to have a mechanism whereby if a core developer is approached by any gov't to compromise bitcoin, they have to resign - and announce that publicly, signing the message with the same pgp signature used to commit their changes to the Bitcoin codebase.

But whats that even mean exactly?

I had some doofbrained researchers contact me to ask about adding tracking code to Bitcoin to help with their research. I told them to buzz off in perhaps excessively rude terms. If it was some law enforcement, some officer Obie from Stockbridge, Nowhere?  I'd have to resign?

Or maybe those researchers were really government shills (how would I know?) does that mean I'm already free?  ?? ?!? FREE?! IT WAS THAT EASY OMG I'M FREE   FREEEE FREEEEEEE!

I imagine that, if malicious, the compromisors (?) would push out an update to QT with a virus or a way to screw up the network

This is why we don't have an auto-updater. We should eventually gain some kind of update tool... Without one a lot of people just keep downloading the software and not checking the PGP signatures, and every time they do it they're exposed to getting an exploited version.

The community should absolutely not accept just some tool that lets a single person or even a small number of people rapidly push out replacement software to all the users.  If you want to give the developers of your node software crazy power just in case of emergencies, give them a key that makes it shut off, but don't let them freely push updates.  If I ever come back asking for the ability to rapidly push updates that means I've be replaced by an alien symbiont. (And really: the same for any developer, you'd have to be evil or crazy to want that ability: It makes you a target)

I'd like to see is someday have a system where developers can push an update out and your computer will download it but not install it. And after a minimum delay of a couple days if it gets enough positive signatures and no (or not too many) negative signatures, it will wait a random amount of time (e.g. up to a week) and then start asking you if you'd like to make the upgrade (this way if it's busted you might hear about it or the update may be withdrawn after other people update but before you install it)... obviously you could go and manually trigger the upgrade at any point.  This would give time for a lot of people to review any updates and sound alarms if they found problems. It could also allow us to be very liberal in granting veto access, since the vetos would just make things fall back to a manually triggered install.

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[TraderTimm]

In all seriousness though, I'd like to have a mechanism whereby if a core developer is approached by any gov't to compromise bitcoin, they have to resign - and announce that publicly, signing the message with the same pgp signature used to commit their changes to the Bitcoin codebase.

But whats that even mean exactly?

I had some doofbrained researchers contact me to ask about adding tracking code to Bitcoin to help with their research. I told them to buzz off in perhaps excessively rude terms. If it was some law enforcement, some officer Obie from Stockbridge, Nowhere?  I'd have to resign?

Or maybe those researchers were really government shills (how would I know?) does that mean I'm already free?  ?? ?!? FREE?! IT WAS THAT EASY OMG I'M FREE   FREEEE FREEEEEEE!

Oh you silly man.

What I mean is the scenario where you're served a FISA order to comply under penalty of (something grave). If you're not in the jurisdiction of the USA, good for you, but if you are, it would mean you couldn't say anything about it directly. You'd have to pull a "Lavabit" and say -- "Well, nice working with you, have a good one." and we'd all know what was up.

I don't want you to, and frankly, I don't see how anyone can prevent you from working on what you want to - but I am more concerned about bullying by assorted "secret court" crap.

That's all.

[greyhawk]

Excellent, so as a government agency all I need to do is approach all developers, who then summarily resign and lookie there, I've just killed off Bitcoin, aren't I neat?

[TraderTimm]

Excellent, so as a government agency all I need to do is approach all developers, who then summarily resign and lookie there, I've just killed off Bitcoin, aren't I neat?

So, if one of them does get approached with a gag-order not to discuss it, what would be your brilliant idea?

[greyhawk]

Excellent, so as a government agency all I need to do is approach all developers, who then summarily resign and lookie there, I've just killed off Bitcoin, aren't I neat?

So, if one of them does get approached with a gag-order not to discuss it, what would be your brilliant idea?

I'm not here to promote and/or save bitcoin. I'm here to spread FUD and laugh at people. Why are you asking me?

[genjix]

I have been approached by UK cyber-crimes police multiple times to work for them.

[greyhawk]

I have been approached by UK cyber-crimes police multiple times to work for them.

Do they know about your underage porn business?

[TraderTimm]

I'm not here to promote and/or save bitcoin. I'm here to spread FUD and laugh at people. Why are you asking me?

Thanks for self-outing yourself. Filter updated.

[greyhawk]

I'm not here to promote and/or save bitcoin. I'm here to spread FUD and laugh at people. Why are you asking me?

Thanks for self-outing yourself. Filter updated.

Enjoy your echo chamber. 

[TippingPoint]

If NSA wanted to compromise one or more persons in order to subtly affect decisions, what methods would they use?  Snowden describes a case that he learned about.  

Whistleblower Edward Snowden Describes The Time The CIA Got A Swiss Banker Drunk And Put Him Behind The Wheel
http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-describes-cia-tricks-2013-6#ixzz2eVQoKJCW

The known methods used to "turn" subjects include sex, financial pressure, and occasionally drug use to blackmail or extort, and force seemingly small changes in behavior.  These changes are then leveraged to force even greater changes in behavior.

The attack vectors are typically the spouse, child custody, job security, and criminal prosecution.

[crazy_rabbit]

The NSA would just join. They would do that by submitting regularly awesome code updates, doing incredible code work, being helpful, etc... they would sale right on into the team. But the rest of the team would be checking their code, we hope. So what can you do?

FYI: genijx just released a pre-alpha of a totally independent implementation of Bitcoin. This is what we really need to fight this sort of worry. Multiple, entirely different, implementations of the protocol.

[fenican]

If the dev team was compromised, then Bitcoin-QT would change, but Electrum, Blockchain.info, the wallets on exchanges, all the mobile phone wallets, and all the mining pools, will continue working as usual, and will likely reject Bitcoin-QT transactions and blocks, which would instantly throw really huge red flags that something is up. So, anyone using anything other than QT will be fine, and anyone using QT will just have to either downgrade to an older version, or export their private keys to a non-compromised wallet.

Incorrect.

The dev team can't make any changes to all the Bitcoin-Qt versions already distributed and running on various computers. If you don't want to agree to any changes, simply do not upgrade.

True until an auto-update feature is added

[theymos]

I am concerned about the security of the development team.  They give out too much personal information and I even saw Gavin's house on one news report.  Not a good idea.

Yeah, some strongly-anonymous person besides Satoshi should really have a copy of the alert key. (I am not very public, but I'm not terribly anonymous.) Control of the bitcoin.org and bitcointalk.org domain names is shared between Sirius and an anonymous person, which is good.

Or maybe we need to establish a "Bitcoin Defense Force" to act as bodyguards for all of the devs.

[Dabs]

Or maybe we need to establish a "Bitcoin Defense Force" to act as bodyguards for all of the devs.

I can help, but I can only offer protection if you are in my country. If you're somewhere else, you'd have to fly me there and issue me a work contract or something so I get a visa if needed.

[TippingPoint]

I recommend that the development team have one or more distress codes (inocuous words or phrases).

[QuestionAuthority]

I am concerned about the security of the development team.  They give out too much personal information and I even saw Gavin's house on one news report.  Not a good idea.

Yeah, some strongly-anonymous person besides Satoshi should really have a copy of the alert key. (I am not very public, but I'm not terribly anonymous.) Control of the bitcoin.org and bitcointalk.org domain names is shared between Sirius and an anonymous person, which is good.

Or maybe we need to establish a "Bitcoin Defense Force" to act as bodyguards for all of the devs.

Are you saying that you, Sirius and the person calling himself Satoshi are still in communication and all have control? Do you talk to Satoshi often?

[Dabs]

I recommend that the development team have one or more distress codes (inocuous words or phrases).

They just need a dead man's switch. When they are "compromised" they simply don't reset the switch and let it activate. Oh, of course, you'll say, the evil government agencies will instruct them to reset the switch.

[gmaxwell]

They just need a dead man's switch. When they are "compromised" they simply don't reset the switch and let it activate. Oh, of course, you'll say, the evil government agencies will instruct them to reset the switch.

There is a popular mining pool has a deadmans switch to turn over control of the pool to the backup ops if the main ops go offline...

It has fired accidentally once.  These things are tricky to get right.

Worse, they can create some perverse incentives.  If we had a deadmans switch we might not tell you if we thought it would make attacks more likely.

[Dabs]

Don't tell anyone. That's the point. Suddenly we'll just get an email with a signed GPG message stating that "We put this in place some time ago, here is the secret word, here is the hash, don't trust any source code from me from now on without looking at it, etc, this was supposed to fire if I don't reset this for 2 months, etc etc."

That, or you have this thing that sends a message if you trigger it, and you will trigger it if you got compromised while you still have the power to trigger it. Because you can't trigger it if you're dead. So it's an "alive man's switch".

If you're dead and gone, then obviously no further source code or binary can come from you. In that case, you also have a true dead man's switch set for about 1 year.

[luv2drnkbr]

Suppose someone accidentally the whole dev team? Or suppose it is infiltrated? Or suppose they are bought off?

How should we as a community react? Probably fork right, but what fork? It is easy to imagine a dozen forks springing up before things stabilize. In a worst case they could be so weak, the original, comprised chain becomes the favored one, simply because it is easier to stick with the status quo.

Maybe we could benefit from a chain of command or something?

This has already happened, forcing the transactions to be over a certain amount of coins. Nothing you can do, just take it, as we have seen.

Sigh, no it hasn't.  Actually, exactly the opposite of that has happened.  Gavin made a change to the DEFAULT configuration options so that dust spam wouldn't propogate.  HOWEVER, you can change that yourself in your configuration file, and mine yourself, and connect to miners that accept dust spam.  Dust is still a valid transaction, and if you mine yourself and happen to find a block, other people will accept that block.  Currently, most users and miners simply drop and don't relay dust transactions, BUT if you want that to change, all you have to do is rally support.  The devs made this OPTIONAL, so that if the COMMUNITY decides it's best, they can still relay all the dust they want.  Just add this to your config file:

Code:

mintxfee=0.00000001
mintxrelayfee=0.00000000
addnode=173.242.112.53
addnode=184.152.8.228

mintxfee must be 1 satoshi, because if you put zero it gets confused, because it already has a way to deal with 0 mintxfee.. they're called no-fee transactions. So mintxfee is the minimum amount for a transaction fee that is non-zero, which of course is 1 satoshi.  The addnodes are the only two nodes I know of that mine and relay dust tx's.