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From: Patrick Strateman <patrick.strateman@gmail.com>
To: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] [BIP Draft] Datastream compression of Blocks and Transactions
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2015 10:45:23 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <565F3C43.3040903@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <565E9EC7.50003@bitcartel.com>

If compression is to be used a custom compression algorithm should be
written.

Bitcoin data is largely incompressible outside of a tiny subset of fields.

On 12/01/2015 11:33 PM, Simon Liu via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Hi Pavel,
>
> (my earlier email was moderated, so the list can only see it via your
> reply),
>
> Yes, an attacker could try and send malicious data to take advantage of
> a compression library vulnerability...  but is it that much worse than
> existing attack vectors which might also result in denial of service,
> crashes, remote execution?
>
> Peter, perhaps your BIP can look at possible ways to isolate the
> decompression phase, such as having incoming compressed blocks be saved
> to a quarantine folder and an external process/daemon decompress and
> verify the block's hash?
>
> Regards,
> Simon
>
>
> On 12/01/2015 10:47 PM, Pavel Janík wrote:
>>> On 02 Dec 2015, at 00:44, Simon Liu <simon@bitcartel.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Matt/Pavel,
>>>
>>> Why is it scary/undesirable?  Thanks.
>> Select your preferable compression library and google for it with +CVE.
>>
>> E.g. in zlib:
>>
>> http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-72/product_id-1820/GNU-Zlib.html
>>
>> …allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted compressed stream…
>> …allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash)…
>> etc.
>>
>> Do you want to expose such lib to the potential attacker?
>> --  
>> Pavel Janík
>>
>>
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev



  reply	other threads:[~2015-12-02 18:44 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-11-30 23:12 [bitcoin-dev] [BIP Draft] Datastream compression of Blocks and Transactions Peter Tschipper
2015-12-01  5:28 ` Matt Corallo
2015-12-01 20:06   ` Pavel Janík
     [not found]     ` <565E30C6.1010002@bitcartel.com>
2015-12-02  6:47       ` Pavel Janík
2015-12-02  7:33         ` Simon Liu
2015-12-02 18:45           ` Patrick Strateman [this message]
2015-12-02 18:57   ` Emin Gün Sirer
2015-12-02 20:16     ` Peter Tschipper
2015-12-02 22:23       ` Matt Corallo
2015-12-02 23:02         ` Peter Tschipper
2015-12-04 13:30           ` Matt Corallo
2015-12-03 19:14     ` Gavin Andresen
2015-12-03 23:07       ` Rusty Russell
2015-12-02 23:05   ` Peter Tschipper
2015-12-03  5:52     ` Dave Scotese

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