Proof-of-Work Defense for Onion Services

Re:Proof-of-Work Defense for Onion Services by nullc on Friday August 25, 2023 @07:09PM (#37268166)

Value transfer would be worse because it would create bad incentives. Now I'd have a reason to flood garbage fake (/proxy) onion sites to skim the payments. The user would have to go obtain that value too, creating logistical challenges.

There might be legal issues for the users too-- e.g. upgrading copyright infringement into criminally prosecutable commercial copyright infringement.

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Re:Proof-of-Work Defense for Onion Services by runeks on Sunday August 27, 2023 @01:01PM (#37284492)

Burning funds, instead of transferring them, would solve two of your three issues.

Obtaining the funds creates extra friction, yes, but it’s possible the benefit outweighs the cost — e.g. because an attacker can no longer utilize the idle CPUs of botnet devices.

Ultimately, any form of anti-DoS protection also punishes legitimate users. The question is (1) how much it punishes attackers relative to this, and (2) whether this punishment for legitimate users deters them, too.

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Re:Proof-of-Work Defense for Onion Services by nullc on Sunday August 27, 2023 @02:03PM (#37285135)

Sure, but that wasn't what the person I was responding to suggested. If they had, I probably wouldn't have commented.

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