Broadcasting the raw transaction encrypted?

[DaveF]

For any nation  / state / large business it's irrelevant. There is off the shelf hardware that can do it. In most (all?) major data centers you don't even know where your fiber is going. If I put in a request for a link to Cogent I get a fiber pair that shows up in my cabinet. I have to assume that it goes from my location to a patch panel that goes back to Cogent. If someone put something in that path that could record and / or monitor everything I would never know; and since it's a secure facility I just can't walk into the meat-me fiber / copper room to see where the cables go.

Not sure about your operations, but prior tier-1 networks I've worked with, if it's their equipment on both sides of the link they'll get notified when the packet counters on each side differ too much (indication that the link is silently losing or duplicating packets), which they eventually will if you're actively intercepting traffic.

It must have been a while since you have done it. Now, if Cogent wants to talk to Hurricane Electric at most DCs Cogent has their equipment on their side, Hurricane has on their side and the fiber is provided by the facility. Obviously if either provider owns the DC is different, but most these days are carrier neutral facilities.

This is in the US, I really don't know how it is in other parts of the world.

Same with getting caught. If tomorrow it was found out the Apple was monitoring all BTC transactions that happened on iPhones. I would predict the following would happen:

You're missing the point where apple gets sued over it, which I can guarantee would happen.  You also miss the point where this would justify people doing the extra work of adding authenticated links which would happen to some degree, if not as much as we might hope

Over time, yes they would get sued and yes people would add authenticated links. I was talking about the what happens tomorrow part of it.
If Apple was doing it and Google was not. How many users would switch from IOS to Android when they found out they were being monitored was more my point. Sorry, did not express it properly.

What serious reason would you have to oppose adding 0.001% cpu usage in order to upgrade from no resistance to some (even if arguably weak) resistance?

None, I think it's good. I was just pointing out that there are so many other places for 'bad things' to happen.

A bit OT but, with most people using light / mobile wallets it makes you wonder if anyone outside of a very very small group really cares.
If you are using a node / service that is not under your control to transmit your transactions you have already given up a bunch of privacy.

-Dave

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[gmaxwell]

A bit OT but, with most people using light / mobile wallets it makes you wonder if anyone outside of a very very small group really cares.
If you are using a node / service that is not under your control to transmit your transactions you have already given up a bunch of privacy.

Unfortunately many people have no idea how close to a total privacy loss using most any light/mobile wallets is (even over tor)... it doesn't help that they've been actively misinformed.  But in general, people seem to have a hard time reasoning about privacy--  they want it, but seem to forget they want it, and give it up easily.  The harms are just too vague and distant sounding much of the time.

[j2002ba2]

Here is a list of some transaction broadcasting services: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_broadcasting

Since gmaxwell mentioned that TorBrowser might leak identifying information, here are some ways of submitting the transaction from command line, after firing up TorBrowser or Tor service. These are the ones, which were working at the time I tested.

rawtransaction is the usual hex-encoded one. For windows+torbrowser use port 9150.

blockstream.info:

Code:

curl -v -H "User-Agent:" --socks5-hostname localhost:9050 --data "rawtransaction" http://explorerzydxu5ecjrkwceayqybizmpjjznk5izmitf2modhcusuqlid.onion/api/tx

blockchair.com: (connection to the onion service is blocked by captcha)

Code:

curl -v -H "User-Agent:" --socks5-hostname localhost:9050 --data "data=rawtransaction" https://api.blockchair.com/bitcoin/push/transaction

blockchain.info:

Code:

curl -v -H "User-Agent:" --socks5-hostname localhost:9050 --data "tx=rawtransaction" https://blockchain.info/pushtx

[DaveF]

Here is a list of some transaction broadcasting services: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_broadcasting

Since gmaxwell mentioned that TorBrowser might leak identifying information, here are some ways of submitting the transaction from command line, after firing up TorBrowser or Tor service. These are the ones, which were working at the time I tested.
...

If you are using one of these services, just going to a random open Wi-Fi and using one of them would probably be just as anonymous as using TOR.
Every place I go to now has some form of "free wi-fi"  opening a web page and copy / pasting a TX and nothing else is just about as anonymous as you can get.
Windows / MAC / Linux all allow you to use a custom MAC address for your Wi-Fi so you can even alter that.

Once again from the I'm in the US and have a ton of options for this.

-Dave

[pooya87]

I tried it and it works. But what kind of information sent to them (besides raw transaction), only time when you make POST request & information with prefix ">" shown on curl?

The point of doing something like this is to eliminate the browser, what you send here is exactly what you want opening a connection to the remote server and sending a single POST request whereas using a browser you keep the connection open and the remote server can communicate a lot more with you exploiting many things to de-anonymized, such as exploiting WebRTC, finger-printing, abusing the persistent data stored in the browser in previous visits, ...

[NotATether]

blockchair.com: (connection to the onion service is blocked by captcha)

Code:

curl -v -H "User-Agent:" --socks5-hostname localhost:9050 --data "data=rawtransaction" https://api.blockchair.com/bitcoin/push/transaction

Have you tried filling the user agent with a bogus browser value like the ones for Google Chrome or Firefox, in order to trick the hidden service into not giving you a captcha by making it think that your connection is not from a command-line fetcher, but from one of those browsers?

[ranochigo]

Have you tried filling the user agent with a bogus browser value like the ones for Google Chrome or Firefox, in order to trick the hidden service into not giving you a captcha by making it think that your connection is not from a command-line fetcher, but from one of those browsers?

Won't work. The site restricts connections from Tor exit nodes or through its onion address, no matter what UA it is using. It would be quite bad for the site if they're restricting you based on your UA instead of your IP. API calls don't consume more bandwidth or resources to pose a problem.

[DaveF]

Here is a list of some transaction broadcasting services: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_broadcasting

Since gmaxwell mentioned that TorBrowser might leak identifying information, here are some ways of submitting the transaction from command line, after firing up TorBrowser or Tor service. These are the ones, which were working at the time I tested.
...

If you are using one of these services, just going to a random open Wi-Fi and using one of them would probably be just as anonymous as using TOR.

If you don't care exposing your rough location based on IP.

Depends on where you are doing it.
Once again, I can say that where I am if I use the local pizza shops Wi-Fi it's going to get you as far as the provider (Optimum / Altice) they will know where you are. The rest of the world can just see that you are in their ip range. And their very general geographic footprint. https://search.arin.net/rdap/?query=69.124.219.35 is where I got dinner last night.

Verizon Fios is even worse: https://search.arin.net/rdap/?query=72.68.219.28 Tell me what coffee shop that came from. Heck, tell me what state.

Since you mention web page, please read what @gmaxwell and @pooya87 said about browser.

If you are just grabbing your day to day laptop and using the same web browser you use all the time to broadcast it, then yes.
If you are just grabbing your day to day laptop and using a different browser in private mode then sort of.
If you are using your day to day laptop but booted with a live CD then it's another story.

Just depends on how far you want to go for privacy.....

-Dave

[PrimeNumber7]

Verizon Fios is even worse: https://search.arin.net/rdap/?query=72.68.219.28 Tell me what coffee shop that came from. Heck, tell me what state.

According to https://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/72.68.219.28 the IP address 72.68.219.28 is associated with a location in Garden City, New York.

I do agree that using public WiFi does give most users plenty of privacy. One thing that I might point out about using public WiFi at a coffee shop, or small pizza joint, or similar is that it will not be obvious to most that you are not using your home internet. You are almost hiding in plain view. If someone sets up many nodes to monitor the IP addresses that transactions originate from, it will be obvious when a transaction originates from tor. Also, if too few people use tor to maximize their privacy, the use of tor might be a fingerprint of its own when someone is looking at transactions trying to break or reduce privacy.

[DaveF]

Verizon Fios is even worse: https://search.arin.net/rdap/?query=72.68.219.28 Tell me what coffee shop that came from. Heck, tell me what state.

According to https://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/72.68.219.28 the IP address 72.68.219.28 is associated with a location in Garden City, New York.

Not even close.
Was not even in NY when I grabbed the IP.
Which was the point of why I said it. Heck even the PTR part of the address points back to the fact that it is coming from an NYC pool of addresses.
pool-72-68-219-28.nycmny.east.verizon.net
I know that most of the geo databases are becoming more and more inaccurate as time goes on. With, for lack of a better term, "long term DHCP reservations" for devices becoming more common. Here in NY Fios and cable modem / routers will grab an IP for weeks or even months. Then for whatever reason, they change. But there is a long lag for the geodatabases to update. AND here is the fun part with larger and larger networks all pulling back to one central point the pools of IP addresses are becoming more spread out.

True, but usually people wouldn't go somewhere too far from their house (usually on same / nearby city).

Probably, unless you are making a deliberate decision to go far away.

Years ago also some hotel chains also had their free Wi-Fi (possibly other areas) all go thought corporate. So no matter where you were, when you connected it came through an IP that looked like it was in Chicago. So while the hotel chain would know were you were, nobody else could really.

-Dave