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Topic: Can operating a Bitcoin node make you a target? (Read 2055 times)

legendary
Activity: 1134
Merit: 1598
December 14, 2016, 04:31:18 AM
#28
Yeah, I'm rarely using VPNs to pay with and to use Bitcoin. Governments aren't taking any measures regarding Bitcoin for now, but I have a feeling that they'll find a way to ban it sooner or later. This is exactly the reason for which I prefer risking on two sides: Bitcoin and precious metals. Everyone told me that precious metals will never go to a $0 price.
legendary
Activity: 3542
Merit: 1965
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
I run a full node 24/7 364.25 from Cornwall UK   The node is 86.151.93.192/Satoshi:0.13.1/segwit and i don't use a proxy.
My ISP knows that i run a full node as i have talked to them over the phone about it.
 
I get billed every 90 days and i pay them in cash at the Post Office once the bill arrives. My ISP wants me to pay them via a direct debit from my bank account every month but i decline. Ever time they ask, i offer to pay them in bitcoin monthly but they decline.
It's stale mate. It must be such a drag for them to post me a paper bill as i refuse to use the free email address they offer me. I also refuse to give them my Russian Yandex email address and refuse to manage my account online too. I insist that i want to talk to somone over the phone in relation to my account when needed.

We can do it all online when they fall into line and take bitcoin instead of paper GBP and not until. I am quite happy to pay cash at the Post Office.

UK Government (Science Office) seem to be pro crypto as you can see fron this gov doc - distributed ledger technology.pdf
An interesting read, quote....
"Distributed ledger technologies have the potential to help governments to
collect taxes, deliver benefits, issue passports, record land registries, assure the
supply chain of goods and generally ensure the integrity of government records
and services. In the NHS, the technology offers the potential to improve health
care by improving and authenticating the delivery of services and by sharing
records securely according to exact rules. "

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/492972/gs-16-1-distributed-ledger-technology.pdf

I think the UK Gov want to dump the banks as much as we do as they can then collect tax at source with crypto.  I got rid of my bank account 2 years ago and have not looked back. I deal only in Cash or Crypto now.

If that makes me a target then so be it, you have to make a stand over what you belive but i think we have the UK Gov on side.
We are quite good at Cryptographic stuff here in UK. Did you ever hear about our Mr Alan Turing et al?



The only reason why I think the UK government seems to be pro crypto, is the possibilities it offers them in the future. Just imagine for one moment a world where every transaction can be traced. Crypto currencies will enable this, when they adopt this technology in the future. They definately see potential in financial surveilance over fiat cash. We already saw some countries that stopped to use big fiat denominations.  

You should not post personal details on public forums, because that makes you a target for hackers. I run my nodes at work, behind firewalls with permission from the boss, because they also support Bitcoin. ^smile^
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 250
Marie Curie, 2 x Nobel Prizes Physics & Chemistry
I run a full node 24/7 364.25 from Cornwall UK   The node is 86.151.93.192/Satoshi:0.13.1/segwit and i don't use a proxy.
My ISP knows that i run a full node as i have talked to them over the phone about it.
 
I get billed every 90 days and i pay them in cash at the Post Office once the bill arrives. My ISP wants me to pay them via a direct debit from my bank account every month but i decline. Ever time they ask, i offer to pay them in bitcoin monthly but they decline.
It's stale mate. It must be such a drag for them to post me a paper bill as i refuse to use the free email address they offer me. I also refuse to give them my Russian Yandex email address and refuse to manage my account online too. I insist that i want to talk to somone over the phone in relation to my account when needed.

We can do it all online when they fall into line and take bitcoin instead of paper GBP and not until. I am quite happy to pay cash at the Post Office.

UK Government (Science Office) seem to be pro crypto as you can see fron this gov doc - distributed ledger technology.pdf
An interesting read, quote....
"Distributed ledger technologies have the potential to help governments to
collect taxes, deliver benefits, issue passports, record land registries, assure the
supply chain of goods and generally ensure the integrity of government records
and services. In the NHS, the technology offers the potential to improve health
care by improving and authenticating the delivery of services and by sharing
records securely according to exact rules. "

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/492972/gs-16-1-distributed-ledger-technology.pdf

I think the UK Gov want to dump the banks as much as we do as they can then collect tax at source with crypto.  I got rid of my bank account 2 years ago and have not looked back. I deal only in Cash or Crypto now.

If that makes me a target then so be it, you have to make a stand over what you belive but i think we have the UK Gov on side.
We are quite good at Cryptographic stuff here in UK. Did you ever hear about our Mr Alan Turing et al?

legendary
Activity: 4410
Merit: 4766
What I can see happening is the government in the US will not make it illegal but make the threat of it to be illegal. They will do this in any industry if the politicians think it maximizes profit for themselves. It also works 2 ways because they can use the threat of pro-Bitcoin legislation against the banks as leverage and another profit maximizing scheme for themselves.

Here we thought that the big mega corporations are the ones bribing the politicians. It is also the other way around where politicians shake down and extort the corporations.

i dont think it will be mad illegal/prohibited. but then again america did have alcohol prohibition 100 years ago. also there is the bitlicence couple years ago that tried not to prohibit bitcoin but strangle businesses in red tape.

so dont expect peace and love. but dont expect a bitcoin war.
all that matters is we recognise the weaknesses and tighten them up so that it doesnt impact or shock us if things change whether minimally or drastically.

EG mining pools ALREADY are prepared with multiple stratum servers and also managers working in different countries to avoid the false 'china will shut down bitcoin mining' rhetoric.
legendary
Activity: 2898
Merit: 1823
What I can see happening is the government in the US will not make it illegal but make the threat of it to be illegal. They will do this in any industry if the politicians think it maximizes profit for themselves. It also works 2 ways because they can use the threat of pro-Bitcoin legislation against the banks as leverage and another profit maximizing scheme for themselves.

Here we thought that the big mega corporations are the ones bribing the politicians. It is also the other way around where politicians shake down and extort the corporations.
copper member
Activity: 2856
Merit: 3071
https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory
That is indeed possible however it is not illegal to use Bitcoin in the UK. If htey wanted to shut down these laws, it would already be illegal and they would probably quite easily be able to trace it.

lets imagine using bitcoin was made illegal, its not. so this is just hypothetical to appease Sir Alpha's thoughts

Yes exactly!
It isn't illegal already so it wouldn't become a target, otherwise it would already be illegal?
There is also already data records being stored for entities like the EU anyway so if it was illegal they would have already detected that problem.

Also, the UK government have done quite a considerable amount to endorce Bitcoin and have been fairly quick to outline laws for that, which I don't think they'll revoke.
newbie
Activity: 1
Merit: 0
For now I feel it is not a problem, it is not like bitcoin nodes are used as a servers for pirated content or anything.
But in the future if governments would like to take more restrictive approach transfert cdg or shift their mindset to prevent bitcoin spreading it could become troublesome.
Let's hope will will never experience a "Bitcoin Node Witch Hunt".
Donc, il ne faudrait pas attendre que le gouvernement prenne ce genre d'initiative.
legendary
Activity: 2898
Merit: 1823
A target of what? Using bitcoin is totally legal and even if the legality was questionable, what could they do to you? Throw you in jail because you're supporting internet transactions with a vehicle that is not even recognized as money? It's like arresting someone for facilitating an exchange of silverware between two collectors Grin

It is just Alpha Goy's firm stance that Bitcoin's end is already near. Or maybe that is what he wants us to think. It is very ironic because I think he is still holding some Bitcoins and he just wants to come here and make threads such as this because he thinks the people in the community will listen to him.
legendary
Activity: 2478
Merit: 1360
Don't let others control your BTC -> self custody
A target of what? Using bitcoin is totally legal and even if the legality was questionable, what could they do to you? Throw you in jail because you're supporting internet transactions with a vehicle that is not even recognized as money? It's like arresting someone for facilitating an exchange of silverware between two collectors Grin
legendary
Activity: 2898
Merit: 1823
With the list of people running nodes so transparent is it possible that in a time of unrest that you could actually become a target?

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/nodes-active/

Surely not everyone is using a VM or proxy right?

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/nodes-active/united-states/

And could the Government use its overreaching powers to get IP addresses and turn them into actual addresses?

If it does make a person running and maintaining a node a target then they should shut them down, easy. Would that really "end" Bitcoin? No it will not. We have seen people risk their lives and more just in the name of freedom. Running a Bitcoin node will only be a slap on the wrist or less compared to that. Plus the people in the deep dark web will be a welcome source of information on how to better hide your nodes.
legendary
Activity: 4410
Merit: 4766
That is indeed possible however it is not illegal to use Bitcoin in the UK. If htey wanted to shut down these laws, it would already be illegal and they would probably quite easily be able to trace it.

lets imagine using bitcoin was made illegal, its not. so this is just hypothetical to appease Sir Alpha's thoughts
copper member
Activity: 2856
Merit: 3071
https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory
what if the end user and source user have the same owner, that is using another of is pc in a different location or many pc in different part of the world to keep his activity secret? i would you know where he is really located?

if you are a agency looking at the end IP.. trying to find the source is hard..
but if you are the ISP knowing every move every source user is doing. it gets easy.

why do you think the "snoopers charter" exists. that governments are requesting ISP's to keep logs of all users AT SOURCE.

we are not talking about trying to locate millions of users using a certain port. we are talking about UK ISP's ability to notice just 230 nodes using a certain port and sending certain size packets of data via them ports. we are talking about US ISP's ability to notice just 1500 nodes using a certain port and sending certain size packets of data via them ports.
you would be surprised how easy that is to do.

many people thing "the whole internet needs to crash to stop bitcoin". or its impossible due to proxies can change in a second.

but if 5000 nodes are physically disconnected from the internet. you will notice it. and the billions of other people who dont know what bitcoin is wont be interupted.


That is indeed possible however it is not illegal to use Bitcoin in the UK. If htey wanted to shut down these laws, it would already be illegal and they would probably quite easily be able to trace it.
Certain parts would be much more difficult to trace, if people use relays of VPNs for example (more than one VPN connected in an order to a device) then the data is much more difficult for even your ISP to understand. If this VPN is done anonymously and is on a site that doesn't track anything (with a decentralised VPN service) then this makes it almost impossible for the user to be traced without saving packets at both the end point and the start of the connection.

It is possible that bitcoin nodes could be taken down though which would make the use of Bitcoin much more difficult in countries like the UK.
legendary
Activity: 4410
Merit: 4766
what if the end user and source user have the same owner, that is using another of is pc in a different location or many pc in different part of the world to keep his activity secret? i would you know where he is really located?

if you are a agency looking at the end IP.. trying to find the source is hard..
but if you are the ISP knowing every move every source user is doing. it gets easy.

why do you think the "snoopers charter" exists. that governments are requesting ISP's to keep logs of all users AT SOURCE.

we are not talking about trying to locate millions of users using a certain port. we are talking about UK ISP's ability to notice just 230 nodes using a certain port and sending certain size packets of data via them ports. we are talking about US ISP's ability to notice just 1500 nodes using a certain port and sending certain size packets of data via them ports.
you would be surprised how easy that is to do.

many people thing "the whole internet needs to crash to stop bitcoin". or its impossible due to proxies can change in a second.

but if 5000 nodes are physically disconnected from the internet. you will notice it. and the billions of other people who dont know what bitcoin is wont be interupted.
legendary
Activity: 2590
Merit: 1022
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
yes

lets imagine using bitcoin was made illegal, its not. so this is just hypothetical to appease Sir Alpha's thoughts


alot of people think "use proxies". but that only protects the end user from knowing the source user..
ISP's will still know because they are packet sniffing the source user not the destination

a government could via united nations/interpol set up a sudden international tactical strike

this can be done by
https://bitnodes.21.co/
getting all the IP's and finding out which ISP that ip belongs to.
EG in the UK its under 230..in the U.S its under 1500 [nodes]

so imagine tomorrow under 230 homes out of 20 million [UK]households have their internet disconnected
at the same time
in america under 1500 homes out of 100mill [US]households have their internet disconnected
and so on
even things like proxies are useless because the landline has been literally cut off for upto 6000 locations
think its impossible? its not. ISP's have millions of customers and regularly turn the internet off on 10's of thousands of users every week due to breach of contract/non payment of bill.

they would also take bitnodes and other DNS seeding locations offline to further cause drama of new node locations not being able to link up, though smart people will just join an IRC channel and request a list of working ip addresses to manually add node connections [once they sort out their land line disconnection barrier]

as for the network
what would happen is that the countries with no "partnerships" to whatever agency is organising this tactical strike will continue on. and people who are affected would need to either move house or go to court to get their internet ban lifted or change ISP which can take upto 10 days in some cases.

again it wont require an all out "ban the internet" of 1.5billion people. but instead disconnecting the land lines of under 6000 people to cause alot of drama and issues.

the solution is to get more diverse. instead of bitcoin nodes running in just 91 countries it needs to be running in all 200 countries. and also needs to be running via satalite and other non landline/ISP reliant methods

what if the end user and source user have the same owner, that is using another of is pc in a different location or many pc in different part of the world to keep his activity secret? i would you know where he is really located?
legendary
Activity: 1904
Merit: 1074
It's not unlikely, but very difficult to do globally. If you want to stop everything, you will have to stop all nodes at the same time and that is

highly unlikely. They have tried to stop Tor nodes and they could not do that globally, how are they going to stop Bitcoin nodes? There were

some instances where governments ran Tor nodes and exit nodes were compromised, but there are still 1000's that are not compromised.  Roll Eyes
legendary
Activity: 2814
Merit: 2472
https://JetCash.com
I run a full node over public WiFi.
sr. member
Activity: 462
Merit: 250
Sure they could become targets but not every node has a wallet with BTC in it, if we ever come to a point were nodes are actively targeted it should be rather easy to seperate the nodes from your private keys.
AGD
legendary
Activity: 2070
Merit: 1164
Keeper of the Private Key
I am pretty sure, that nodes are possible targets to attacks, due to the necessary IP leaks. If someone is using a proxy to protect the node, things doesn't change, because that proxy still can be attacked as well as any server.
If you start a node and check with the netstat command, you will see a lot of other nodes IP adresses. If for example DDosed, these servers can be slowed down up to a point, where it will not even be recognized by the other nodes and be "out of the network".


legendary
Activity: 1638
Merit: 1163
Where is my ring of blades...
Your local IPS will only see the encrypted VPN/SSH traffic between your home and the VPS,

as far as I know if you use a VPN with an SSH tunnel in it your ISP will only see normal packages which will look like connecting to an https url not a VPN connection.

and this is actually the way for hiding the VPN connection from ISPs that are doing Deep packet inspection (DPI) to detect VPN type connections and block it.
donator
Activity: 1617
Merit: 1012
alot of people think "use proxies". but that only protects the end user from knowing the source user..
ISP's will still know because they are packet sniffing the source user not the destination



Well you could use a reverse-proxy on a low-cost VPS (with sufficient bandwidth but not enough memory and disk) running VPN or SSH services and run the actual full node at home. Your local IPS will only see the encrypted VPN/SSH traffic between your home and the VPS, while the external world would only see the public IP address of the VPS, which could be in another country. I once ran two nodes at home and used this technique, not because I was trying to hide but because I needed a second public IP address for the second node.

If your VPS is located in a different jurisdiction, and if you can pay for the service with bitcoins without furnishing your actual name/aaddress, it would provide some level of isolation from local authorities vs. running a regular full-node at home.
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