Bitcointalk that challenged whether someone may be trying to surveil the bitcoin network by means of a lot of nodes which were possessed by the exact same thing was popped up on by a thread. User Wicked-Knieval noted that “it’s apparent that one man appears to be running hundreds of bitcoin nodes which vigorously attempt to connect to everyone.” After Knieval reported back to Maxwell, the bitcoin wizard declared that “this is somewhat concerning.”

Maxwell clarified, “What it seems like to me is a fairly hamfisted sybil attack attempting to trick nodes into leaking private data to them.” Then he went on to notice the potential strike could cause issues for specific bitcoin wallets. It is not impossible this node action that is uncommon may be related to problems that Breadwallet users were coping with lately. Maxwell additionally noted that bitcoin does have a “level of opposition” against sybil attacks, but the rationale that these types of assaults typically neglect is because attackers have to get 100% of a casualty node’s links during more threatening actions. The attacker will not need to worry about getting every last one of a sufferer’s links since this possible sybil attack is all about leaking private data.

The real problem with this kind of strike is the fact that one thing with control over many nodes is trying to link to as many peers as possible. Linking to a lot of peers provides the attacker a better perspective of what’s really occurring on the network since they are able to attach more bitcoin addresses and IP addresses together.