Open Bitcoin Privacy Protect Privacy Questionnaire, Mid-Year 2015 report
4 messages, 7 Aug 2015 to 1 Mar 2016. Started by wei.
wei, Kristov Atlas, Odinn Cyberguerrilla, Gregory Maxwell
Hi,
Hope it is OK to post this on the list, was not sure where else to post for answers from Bitcoin-Qt client developers.
As part of the Open Bitcoin Privacy Project’s ongoing wallet privacy measurement efforts, we’ve selected the Bitcoin-Qt client v0.11.0 for inclusion into our 2015 mid year survey.
While our volunteers will be performing a series of functional tests by interacting with your application directly, several of the features we’d like to examine are not easily discernible by non-developers, and for this reason we’re asking for your help.
If you can answer the following questions about your wallet’s behavior it will assist us with the process of accurately rating your wallet’s privacy features.
Transaction Formatting
1. Does your application take any steps to create ambiguity between transactions which unavoidably spend from multiple addresses at the same time and intentional mixing transactions? 2. What algorithms does your application use for ordering inputs and outputs in a transaction? In particular, how do you handle the change output and do you take into account common practices of other wallet applications when determining ordering? 3. Does your application minimize the harmful effects of address reuse by spending every spendable input (“sweeping”) from an address when a transaction is created? 4. Does your application fully implement BIP 62?
Mixing
5. If your application supports mixing: a. What is the average number of participants a user can expect to interact with on a typical join transaction? b. Does your application attempt to construct join transactions in a way that avoids distinguishing them from non-join transactions? c. Does your application perform any kind of reversibility analysis on join transactions prior to presenting them to the user for confirmation? d. Is the mixing technique employed secure against correlation attacks by the facilitator, such as a CoinJoin server or off-chain mixing service? e. Is the mixing technique employed secure against theft of funds by the facilitator or its participants?
Donations
6. If your application has a fee or donation to the developers feature: a. What steps do you take to make the donations indistinguishable from regular spend in terms of output sizes and destination addresses?
Balance Queries and Tx Broadcasting
7. Please describe how your application obtains balance information in terms of how queries from the user’s device can reveal a connection between the addresses in their wallet. a. Does the application keep a complete copy of the blockchain locally (full node)? b. Does the user’s device provide a filter which matches some fraction of the blockchain while providing a false positive rate (bloom or prefix filters)? i. If so, approximately what fraction of the blockchain does the filter match in a default configuration (0% - 100%)? c. Does the user’s device query all of their addresses at the same time? d. Does the user’s device query addresses individually in a manner that does not allow the query responder to correlate queries for different addresses? e. Can users opt to obtain their balance information via Tor (or equivalent means)? 8. Does the applications route outgoing transactions independently from the manner in which it obtains balance information? Can users opt to have their transactions submitted to the Bitcoin network via Tor (or an equivalent means) independently of how they obtain their balance information? 9. If your application supports multiple identities/wallets, does each one connect to the network as if it were completely independent from the other? a. Does the application ever request balance information for addresses belonging to multiple identities in the same network query? b. Are outgoing transactions from multiple identities routed independently of each other to the Bitcoin network? c. When an identity/wallet is deleted, does the deletion process eliminate all evidence from the user's device that the wallet was previously installed?
Network Privacy
10. When a user performs a backup operation for their wallet, does this generate any automatic network activity, such as a web query or email? 11. Does your application perform any lookup external to the user’s device related to identifying transaction senders or recipients? 12. Does you application connect to known endpoints which would be visible to an ISP, such as your domain? 13. If your application connects directly to nodes in the Bitcoin P2P network, does it either use an unremarkable user agent string (Bitcoin Core. BitcoinJ, etc), or randomize its user agent on each connection?
Physical Access
14. Does the application uninstall process for your application eliminate all evidence from the user's device that the application was previously installed? Does it also eliminate wallet data? 15. Does your application use techniques such as steganography to store persistent wallet metadata in a form not identifiable as belong to a Bitcoin wallet application? 16. Please describe the degree to which users can use passwords/PINs to protect their data: a. Can the user set a password/PIN to protect their private keys? b. Can the user set a password/PIN to protect their public keys and balance information? c. Can the user set a password/PIN to encrypt other wallet metadata, such as address books and transaction notes? d. Does the application use a single password/PIN to cover all protected data, or does it allow the use of multiple passwords/PINs?
Custodianship
17. Do you as a wallet provider ever have access to unencrypted copies of the user’s private keys, public keys, or any other wallet metadata which may be used to associate a user with their transactions or balances?
Telemetry Data
18. If your application reports telemetry data, such as usage information or automatic crash reporting, does the user have the opportunity to review and approve all information transmitted before it is sent?
Source Code and Building
19. Can a user of your application compile the application themselves in a manner that produces a binary version identical to the version you distribute (deterministic build system)?
Thank you for assisting us with this effort to measure privacy progress in the Bitcoin wallet space. If at all possible, please return this survey before 2015/08/13 to ensure the score for your application will be as accurate as possible.
Sincerely,
Wei Open Bitcoin Privacy Project Contributor
Hi Wei,
As you know, I'm not a developer of Bitcoin-Qt, but we'll need to make our best guesses for these answers if the developers won't reply. I'm going to post my best guesses here so that people reading the list have a short window of opportunity to correct me if they wish.
On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 2:46 PM, Wei via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation•org> wrote:
Quoted text (6 lines)
> Transaction Formatting > > 1. Does your application take any steps to create ambiguity between > transactions which unavoidably spend from multiple addresses at the same > time and intentional mixing transactions? >
No, Bitcoin-Qt does not try to make non-mixing transactions look like mixing transactions.
Quoted text (5 lines)
> 2. What algorithms does your application use for ordering inputs and > outputs in a transaction? In particular, how do you handle the change > output and do you take into account common practices of other wallet > applications when determining ordering? >
Not yet BIP 69. These notes suggest that outputs are randomized: https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.8.1
Quoted text (4 lines)
> 3. Does your application minimize the harmful effects of address > reuse by spending every spendable input (“sweeping”) from an address when a > transaction is created? >
Unknown
4. Does your application fully implement BIP 62?
Quoted text (1 line)
>
Here's a detailed answer on stack exchange: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/35904/how-much-of-bip-62-dealing-with-malleability-has-been-implemented
By item, my extremely brief interpretation:
Non-DER encoded ECDSA signatures: BIP66 soft fork has happened, so this is presumed to be implemented Non-push operations in scriptSig: Implemented Push operations in scriptSig of non-standard size type: Implemented in 0.9.0 Zero-padded number pushes: Implemented in 0.10.0 (current available version is 0.11.0) Inherent ECDSA signature malleability: ...implemented? Superfluous scriptSig operations: implemented 0.6.0 Inputs ignored by scripts: Only partly addressed by 0.10.0. It appears that the rest would require changes to consensus rules, so Bitcoin-Qt is as compliant as it can be. Sighash flags based masking and New signatures by the sender: Can't be implemented without changes to consensus rules.
I would summarize this as a "yes."
Quoted text (5 lines)
> > Mixing > > 5. If your application supports mixing: >
It doesn't. There's an issue for CoinJoin here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3226
Quoted text (17 lines)
> a. What is the average number of participants a user can expect to > interact with on a typical join transaction? > b. Does your application attempt to construct join transactions in a > way that avoids distinguishing them from non-join transactions? > c. Does your application perform any kind of reversibility analysis > on join transactions prior to presenting them to the user for confirmation? > d. Is the mixing technique employed secure against correlation > attacks by the facilitator, such as a CoinJoin server or off-chain mixing > service? > e. Is the mixing technique employed secure against theft of funds by > the facilitator or its participants? > > Donations > > 6. If your application has a fee or donation to the developers > feature: >
No donation feature last time I checked.
Quoted text (11 lines)
> a. What steps do you take to make the donations indistinguishable > from regular spend in terms of output sizes and destination addresses? > > Balance Queries and Tx Broadcasting > > 7. Please describe how your application obtains balance information > in terms of how queries from the user’s device can reveal a connection > between the addresses in their wallet. > a. Does the application keep a complete copy of the blockchain > locally (full node)? >
Yes
Quoted text (4 lines)
> b. Does the user’s device provide a filter which matches some > fraction of the blockchain while providing a false positive rate (bloom or > prefix filters)? >
No, it just downloads the whole blockchain and performs local queries.
Quoted text (3 lines)
> i. If so, approximately what fraction of the blockchain does the > filter match in a default configuration (0% - 100%)? >
100%, unless a user bootstraps downloading the blockchain. Bootstrapping will potentially limit the user's anonymity set to other people who have downloaded that bootstrap.dat file.
Quoted text (3 lines)
> c. Does the user’s device query all of their addresses at the same > time? >
N/A
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> d. Does the user’s device query addresses individually in a manner > that does not allow the query responder to correlate queries for different > addresses? >
No. Just download blocks and processes that information locally.
Quoted text (3 lines)
> e. Can users opt to obtain their balance information via Tor (or > equivalent means)? >
If Tor is set up as a SOCKS proxy, you can configure Bitcoin-QT download the blockchain and broadcast txs through a single Tor circuit. This can be configured once before opening Bitcoin-Qt.
8. Does the applications route outgoing transactions independently
Quoted text (5 lines)
> from the manner in which it obtains balance information? Can users opt to > have their transactions submitted to the Bitcoin network via Tor (or an > equivalent means) independently of how they obtain their balance > information? >
No, you can only configure a single proxy.
Quoted text (4 lines)
> 9. If your application supports multiple identities/wallets, does > each one connect to the network as if it were completely independent from > the other? >
No built-in support for multiple identities. You can hotswap wallet files to crudely simulate this. You'd have to manually change the Tor connection outside of Bitcoin-Qt to create the effect of making the network connections independent.
Quoted text (3 lines)
> a. Does the application ever request balance information for > addresses belonging to multiple identities in the same network query? >
Blocks are downloaded and tx broadcasts received/relayed rather than querying the utxo set for a particular address. When swapping between wallet files, some information may be leaked e.g. the client may be at the same block height in terms of what it has downloaded from the p2p network, which may leak to global passive adversaries/AS's or sybil attackers the fact that a single client was used for multiple wallets.
Quoted text (3 lines)
> b. Are outgoing transactions from multiple identities routed > independently of each other to the Bitcoin network? >
Transactions from multiple identities would not be routed at the same time. I'm not clear what happens if you have a single wallet (identity) open and then open a new wallet (identity) without closing Bitcoin-Qt -- some of the same routing paths may still be used such that an attacker might observe transactions broadast signed by private keys from multiple wallets (identities) and observe that they appear to come from the same wallet client. OBPP should assume the worst unless prevented contrary evidence.
Quoted text (4 lines)
> c. When an identity/wallet is deleted, does the deletion process > eliminate all evidence from the user's device that the wallet was > previously installed? >
Identity is primarily tied to a wallet.dat file. Deleting it will remove most of the evidence that the wallet was installed on that device, but there may be some extra information in ancillary files that should also be deleted. This is an OS-level function, as there is no operation built into the client to delete a wallet file (identity).
Quoted text (5 lines)
> Network Privacy > > 10. When a user performs a backup operation for their wallet, does > this generate any automatic network activity, such as a web query or email? >
No. Backups are local, and no email or SMS is linked. No web queries related to backup.
Quoted text (3 lines)
> 11. Does your application perform any lookup external to the user’s > device related to identifying transaction senders or recipients? >
No
Quoted text (3 lines)
> 12. Does you application connect to known endpoints which would be > visible to an ISP, such as your domain? >
Yes, some connections to known p2p full nodes to bootstrap the connection to the Bitcoin p2p network. This is configurable, but there are defaults. An ISP is likely to be able to identify a customer as running the Bitcoin-Qt client in particular on this basis.
Quoted text (4 lines)
> 13. If your application connects directly to nodes in the Bitcoin P2P > network, does it either use an unremarkable user agent string (Bitcoin > Core. BitcoinJ, etc), or randomize its user agent on each connection? >
BIP12 specifies format for user agents: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0014.mediawiki
It appears that the Bitcoin-QT leaks specific information about its client version through User Agent. This file defines the current client version: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/55294a9fb673ab0a7c99b9c18279fe12a5a07890/src/clientversion.h
Various other files seem to use this to build up the UA string, which is transmitted to other peers.
Quoted text (7 lines)
> > Physical Access > > 14. Does the application uninstall process for your application > eliminate all evidence from the user's device that the application was > previously installed? Does it also eliminate wallet data? >
Probably depends on the platform. Last time I checked, I think Bitcoin-Qt leaves behind a .bitcoin directory on most platforms even after you run an uninstall script.
Quoted text (4 lines)
> 15. Does your application use techniques such as steganography to > store persistent wallet metadata in a form not identifiable as belong to a > Bitcoin wallet application? >
No
Quoted text (4 lines)
> 16. Please describe the degree to which users can use passwords/PINs > to protect their data: > a. Can the user set a password/PIN to protect their private keys? >
You can encrypt the wallet file with a password. The wallet is "locked" until the password is entered, preventing decryption of the private keys.
Quoted text (3 lines)
> b. Can the user set a password/PIN to protect their public keys and > balance information? >
No -- any wallet.dat file can be opened and the public keys inspected without the password.
Quoted text (3 lines)
> c. Can the user set a password/PIN to encrypt other wallet metadata, > such as address books and transaction notes? >
No -- any wallet.dat file can be opened and the metadata inspected without the password.
Quoted text (3 lines)
> d. Does the application use a single password/PIN to cover all > protected data, or does it allow the use of multiple passwords/PINs? >
A single password for the wallet file.
Quoted text (7 lines)
> > Custodianship > > 17. Do you as a wallet provider ever have access to unencrypted copies > of the user’s private keys, public keys, or any other wallet metadata which > may be used to associate a user with their transactions or balances? >
No custodianship.
Quoted text (7 lines)
> Telemetry Data > > 18. If your application reports telemetry data, such as usage > information or automatic crash reporting, does the user have the > opportunity to review and approve all information transmitted before it is > sent? >
No obvious telemetry data being sent.
Quoted text (6 lines)
> Source Code and Building > > 19. Can a user of your application compile the application themselves > in a manner that produces a binary version identical to the version you > distribute (deterministic build system)? >
Yes, I think that's the point of the gitian stuff.
-Kristov
Related:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/6568
Kristov Atlas via bitcoin-dev:
Quoted text (46 lines)
> Hi Wei, > > As you know, I'm not a developer of Bitcoin-Qt, but we'll need to > make our best guesses for these answers if the developers won't > reply. I'm going to post my best guesses here so that people > reading the list have a short window of opportunity to correct me > if they wish. > > > On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 2:46 PM, Wei via bitcoin-dev < > bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation•org> wrote: > >> Transaction Formatting >> >> 1. Does your application take any steps to create ambiguity >> between transactions which unavoidably spend from multiple >> addresses at the same time and intentional mixing transactions? >> > > No, Bitcoin-Qt does not try to make non-mixing transactions look > like mixing transactions. > > >> 2. What algorithms does your application use for ordering >> inputs and outputs in a transaction? In particular, how do you >> handle the change output and do you take into account common >> practices of other wallet applications when determining >> ordering? >> > > Not yet BIP 69. These notes suggest that outputs are randomized: > https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.8.1 > > >> 3. Does your application minimize the harmful effects of >> address reuse by spending every spendable input (“sweeping”) from >> an address when a transaction is created? >> > > Unknown > > 4. Does your application fully implement BIP 62? >> > > Here's a detailed answer on stack exchange: > http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/35904/how-much-of-bip-62-de
aling-with-malleability-has-been-implemented
Quoted text (212 lines)
> > By item, my extremely brief interpretation: > > Non-DER encoded ECDSA signatures: BIP66 soft fork has happened, so > this is presumed to be implemented Non-push operations in > scriptSig: Implemented Push operations in scriptSig of non-standard > size type: Implemented in 0.9.0 Zero-padded number pushes: > Implemented in 0.10.0 (current available version is 0.11.0) > Inherent ECDSA signature malleability: ...implemented? Superfluous > scriptSig operations: implemented 0.6.0 Inputs ignored by scripts: > Only partly addressed by 0.10.0. It appears that the rest would > require changes to consensus rules, so Bitcoin-Qt is as compliant > as it can be. Sighash flags based masking and New signatures by the > sender: Can't be implemented without changes to consensus rules. > > I would summarize this as a "yes." > > >> >> Mixing >> >> 5. If your application supports mixing: >> > > It doesn't. There's an issue for CoinJoin here: > https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3226 > > >> a. What is the average number of participants a user can >> expect to interact with on a typical join transaction? b. >> Does your application attempt to construct join transactions in >> a way that avoids distinguishing them from non-join >> transactions? c. Does your application perform any kind of >> reversibility analysis on join transactions prior to presenting >> them to the user for confirmation? d. Is the mixing >> technique employed secure against correlation attacks by the >> facilitator, such as a CoinJoin server or off-chain mixing >> service? e. Is the mixing technique employed secure against >> theft of funds by the facilitator or its participants? >> >> Donations >> >> 6. If your application has a fee or donation to the >> developers feature: >> > > No donation feature last time I checked. > > >> a. What steps do you take to make the donations >> indistinguishable from regular spend in terms of output sizes and >> destination addresses? >> >> Balance Queries and Tx Broadcasting >> >> 7. Please describe how your application obtains balance >> information in terms of how queries from the user’s device can >> reveal a connection between the addresses in their wallet. a. >> Does the application keep a complete copy of the blockchain >> locally (full node)? >> > > Yes > > >> b. Does the user’s device provide a filter which matches >> some fraction of the blockchain while providing a false positive >> rate (bloom or prefix filters)? >> > > No, it just downloads the whole blockchain and performs local > queries. > > >> i. If so, approximately what fraction of the blockchain does >> the filter match in a default configuration (0% - 100%)? >> > > 100%, unless a user bootstraps downloading the blockchain. > Bootstrapping will potentially limit the user's anonymity set to > other people who have downloaded that bootstrap.dat file. > > >> c. Does the user’s device query all of their addresses at >> the same time? >> > > N/A > > >> d. Does the user’s device query addresses individually in a >> manner that does not allow the query responder to correlate >> queries for different addresses? >> > > No. Just download blocks and processes that information locally. > > >> e. Can users opt to obtain their balance information via Tor >> (or equivalent means)? >> > > If Tor is set up as a SOCKS proxy, you can configure Bitcoin-QT > download the blockchain and broadcast txs through a single Tor > circuit. This can be configured once before opening Bitcoin-Qt. > > 8. Does the applications route outgoing transactions > independently >> from the manner in which it obtains balance information? Can >> users opt to have their transactions submitted to the Bitcoin >> network via Tor (or an equivalent means) independently of how >> they obtain their balance information? >> > > No, you can only configure a single proxy. > > >> 9. If your application supports multiple identities/wallets, >> does each one connect to the network as if it were completely >> independent from the other? >> > > No built-in support for multiple identities. You can hotswap wallet > files to crudely simulate this. You'd have to manually change the > Tor connection outside of Bitcoin-Qt to create the effect of making > the network connections independent. > > >> a. Does the application ever request balance information >> for addresses belonging to multiple identities in the same >> network query? >> > > Blocks are downloaded and tx broadcasts received/relayed rather > than querying the utxo set for a particular address. When swapping > between wallet files, some information may be leaked e.g. the > client may be at the same block height in terms of what it has > downloaded from the p2p network, which may leak to global passive > adversaries/AS's or sybil attackers the fact that a single client > was used for multiple wallets. > > >> b. Are outgoing transactions from multiple identities >> routed independently of each other to the Bitcoin network? >> > > Transactions from multiple identities would not be routed at the > same time. I'm not clear what happens if you have a single wallet > (identity) open and then open a new wallet (identity) without > closing Bitcoin-Qt -- some of the same routing paths may still be > used such that an attacker might observe transactions broadast > signed by private keys from multiple wallets (identities) and > observe that they appear to come from the same wallet client. OBPP > should assume the worst unless prevented contrary evidence. > > >> c. When an identity/wallet is deleted, does the deletion >> process eliminate all evidence from the user's device that the >> wallet was previously installed? >> > > Identity is primarily tied to a wallet.dat file. Deleting it will > remove most of the evidence that the wallet was installed on that > device, but there may be some extra information in ancillary files > that should also be deleted. This is an OS-level function, as > there is no operation built into the client to delete a wallet file > (identity). > > >> Network Privacy >> >> 10. When a user performs a backup operation for their wallet, >> does this generate any automatic network activity, such as a web >> query or email? >> > > No. Backups are local, and no email or SMS is linked. No web > queries related to backup. > > >> 11. Does your application perform any lookup external to the >> user’s device related to identifying transaction senders or >> recipients? >> > > No > > >> 12. Does you application connect to known endpoints which >> would be visible to an ISP, such as your domain? >> > > Yes, some connections to known p2p full nodes to bootstrap the > connection to the Bitcoin p2p network. This is configurable, but > there are defaults. An ISP is likely to be able to identify a > customer as running the Bitcoin-Qt client in particular on this > basis. > > >> 13. If your application connects directly to nodes in the >> Bitcoin P2P network, does it either use an unremarkable user >> agent string (Bitcoin Core. BitcoinJ, etc), or randomize its user >> agent on each connection? >> > > BIP12 specifies format for user agents: > https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0014.mediawiki > > It appears that the Bitcoin-QT leaks specific information about its > client version through User Agent. This file defines the current > client version: > https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/55294a9fb673ab0a7c99b9c18279fe
12a5a07890/src/clientversion.h
Quoted text (101 lines)
> > Various other files seem to use this to build up the UA string, > which is transmitted to other peers. > > >> >> Physical Access >> >> 14. Does the application uninstall process for your >> application eliminate all evidence from the user's device that >> the application was previously installed? Does it also eliminate >> wallet data? >> > > Probably depends on the platform. Last time I checked, I think > Bitcoin-Qt leaves behind a .bitcoin directory on most platforms > even after you run an uninstall script. > > >> 15. Does your application use techniques such as >> steganography to store persistent wallet metadata in a form not >> identifiable as belong to a Bitcoin wallet application? >> > > No > > >> 16. Please describe the degree to which users can use >> passwords/PINs to protect their data: a. Can the user set a >> password/PIN to protect their private keys? >> > > You can encrypt the wallet file with a password. The wallet is > "locked" until the password is entered, preventing decryption of > the private keys. > > >> b. Can the user set a password/PIN to protect their public >> keys and balance information? >> > > No -- any wallet.dat file can be opened and the public keys > inspected without the password. > > >> c. Can the user set a password/PIN to encrypt other wallet >> metadata, such as address books and transaction notes? >> > > No -- any wallet.dat file can be opened and the metadata inspected > without the password. > > >> d. Does the application use a single password/PIN to cover >> all protected data, or does it allow the use of multiple >> passwords/PINs? >> > > A single password for the wallet file. > > >> >> Custodianship >> >> 17. Do you as a wallet provider ever have access to >> unencrypted copies of the user’s private keys, public keys, or >> any other wallet metadata which may be used to associate a user >> with their transactions or balances? >> > > No custodianship. > > >> Telemetry Data >> >> 18. If your application reports telemetry data, such as >> usage information or automatic crash reporting, does the user >> have the opportunity to review and approve all information >> transmitted before it is sent? >> > > No obvious telemetry data being sent. > > >> Source Code and Building >> >> 19. Can a user of your application compile the application >> themselves in a manner that produces a binary version identical >> to the version you distribute (deterministic build system)? >> > > Yes, I think that's the point of the gitian stuff. > > -Kristov > > > > _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing > list bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation•org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev >
- -- http://abis.io ~ "a protocol concept to enable decentralization and expansion of a giving economy, and a new social good" https://keybase.io/odinn
Better late than never, I should correct things here. In the future it would probably be more productive to open an issue. Otherwise there is no mechanism for someone to take ownership of a response.
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 7:45 PM, Kristov Atlas via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation•org> wrote:
Quoted text (12 lines)
>> 1. Does your application take any steps to create ambiguity between >> transactions which unavoidably spend from multiple addresses at the same >> time and intentional mixing transactions? > No, Bitcoin-Qt does not try to make non-mixing transactions look like mixing > transactions. >> 2. What algorithms does your application use for ordering inputs and >> outputs in a transaction? In particular, how do you handle the change output >> and do you take into account common practices of other wallet applications >> when determining ordering? > > Not yet BIP 69. These notes suggest that outputs are randomized: > https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.8.1
The ordering used by Bitcoin-QT is cryptographically randomized. This provides the greatest privacy possible.
The BIP 69 recommendation would currently be equally as private if universally used, but today would reduce privacy by making the software more distinguishable. It is unclear if BIP69 will be equal in privacy in the future, because external infrastructure may impose ordering requirements that are incompatible with it.
Quoted text (6 lines)
>> 3. Does your application minimize the harmful effects of address >> reuse by spending every spendable input (“sweeping”) from an address when a >> transaction is created? > > Unknown >> 4. Does your application fully implement BIP 62?
BIP 62 is withdrawn. The useful mechanisms in it for standardness rules are, of course, implemeted in Bitcoin Core-- were invented there, and have been there for years.
Quoted text (3 lines)
>> Mixing >> >> 5. If your application supports mixing:
It's unclear to me precisely what is meant here. I'll answer broadly.
Bitcoin Core is compatible with and can be used with the joinmarket module to include coinjoins. The raw transaction functionality in Bitcoin Core was also created specifically to facilitate coinjoins. Beyond joinmarket there have been several other coinjoin modules created for Bitcoin Core though today JM is by far the most common,
This functionality is not directly implemented for a number of reasons including the non-existence of decenteralized tools for this that don't harm the user's privacy in other ways.
Quoted text (11 lines)
>> a. What is the average number of participants a user can expect to >> interact with on a typical join transaction? >> b. Does your application attempt to construct join transactions in a >> way that avoids distinguishing them from non-join transactions? >> c. Does your application perform any kind of reversibility analysis >> on join transactions prior to presenting them to the user for confirmation? >> d. Is the mixing technique employed secure against correlation >> attacks by the facilitator, such as a CoinJoin server or off-chain mixing >> service? >> e. Is the mixing technique employed secure against theft of funds by >> the facilitator or its participants?
Skipped as these are specific to the implementation in use.
Quoted text (6 lines)
>> Donations >> 6. If your application has a fee or donation to the developers >> feature: > No donation feature last time I checked. >> a. What steps do you take to make the donations indistinguishable >> from regular spend in terms of output sizes and destination addresses?
As Kristov noted, Bitcoin Core does not implement anti-features like donations.
Quoted text (8 lines)
>> Balance Queries and Tx Broadcasting >> >> 7. Please describe how your application obtains balance information >> in terms of how queries from the user’s device can reveal a connection >> between the addresses in their wallet. >> a. Does the application keep a complete copy of the blockchain >> locally (full node)? > Yes
Optionally, but in all cases the user's privacy is indistinguishable from keeping all the data locally.
Quoted text (4 lines)
>> b. Does the user’s device provide a filter which matches some >> fraction of the blockchain while providing a false positive rate (bloom or >> prefix filters)? > No, it just downloads the whole blockchain and performs local queries.
It would be more correct to say that Bitcoin Core always has the highest possible FP rate. It uses the only currently available tool to avoid leaking private address information to indexing services. As several academic studies have shown, bloom filters are completely inadequate for protecting user privacy.
Quoted text (5 lines)
>> i. If so, approximately what fraction of the blockchain does the >> filter match in a default configuration (0% - 100%)? > 100%, unless a user bootstraps downloading the blockchain. Bootstrapping > will potentially limit the user's anonymity set to other people who have > downloaded that bootstrap.dat file.
I user that has downloaded a bootstrap.dat is indistinguishable from any other user on the network; their transaction anonymity set is not reduced in any way by doing this. By running bitcoin at all they are distinguished from other people who do not, but thousands of hosts run Bitcoin without even having a wallet.
Quoted text (3 lines)
>> c. Does the user’s device query all of their addresses at the same >> time? > N/A
To be clear: This is N/A because there are no queries that would leak private information about the user's wallet.
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>> d. Does the user’s device query addresses individually in a manner >> that does not allow the query responder to correlate queries for different >> addresses? > No. Just download blocks and processes that information locally.
Yes. Because the Bitcoin Core downlaods all information, the third parties cannot correlate responses.
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>> e. Can users opt to obtain their balance information via Tor (or >> equivalent means)? > If Tor is set up as a SOCKS proxy, you can configure Bitcoin-QT download the > blockchain and broadcast txs through a single Tor circuit. This can be > configured once before opening Bitcoin-Qt.
Bitcoin Core does make remote queries to obtain "balance information", but it can be directed to perform all commmunications via tor, before starting it as noted.
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>> 8. Does the applications route outgoing transactions independently >> from the manner in which it obtains balance information? Can users opt to >> have their transactions submitted to the Bitcoin network via Tor (or an >> equivalent means) independently of how they obtain their balance >> information? > No, you can only configure a single proxy.
Bitcoin Core can simultaneously connect to both Tor hidden services and the public IPv4 network for improved partitioning resistance (and has been able to for years). Instead of setting the socks proxy, the user configures onion=<tor proxy>.
As of 0.12 inbound tor HS is also auto-configured by default when tor is installed.
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>> 9. If your application supports multiple identities/wallets, does >> each one connect to the network as if it were completely independent from >> the other? > > > No built-in support for multiple identities. You can hotswap wallet files to > crudely simulate this. You'd have to manually change the Tor connection > outside of Bitcoin-Qt to create the effect of making the network connections > independent.
All network connections are independent via Tor by default, no manual change is required there. Separate "identities" do require separate wallets, as noted.
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>> a. Does the application ever request balance information for >> addresses belonging to multiple identities in the same network query?
No it does not and cannot. Freedom from this kind of leak is one of the benefits of the current design that doesn't allow intermixing "identities" in wallets.
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> Blocks are downloaded and tx broadcasts received/relayed rather than > querying the utxo set for a particular address. When swapping between wallet > files, some information may be leaked e.g. the client may be at the same > block height in terms of what it has downloaded from the p2p network, which > may leak to global passive adversaries/AS's or sybil attackers the fact that > a single client was used for multiple wallets.
However, unlikely most other wallets, Bitcoin nodes forward transactions for third parties and do not make external queries for private information. Because of this the ability to correlate a particular node connection multiple times does not necessarily leak anything about wallet usage.
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>> b. Are outgoing transactions from multiple identities routed >> independently of each other to the Bitcoin network? > > Transactions from multiple identities would not be routed at the same time. > I'm not clear what happens if you have a single wallet (identity) open and > then open a new wallet (identity) without closing Bitcoin-Qt -- some of the > same routing paths may still be used such that an attacker might observe > transactions broadast signed by private keys from multiple wallets > (identities) and observe that they appear to come from the same wallet > client. OBPP should assume the worst unless prevented contrary evidence.
This assumption is incorrect. All the private wallet state is stored in the wallet. If the wallet is changed the node does know any of them anymore. There is no ability to open a new wallet without restarting the software.
That said, Bitcoin Core normally relays transactions for third parties-- unlikely virtually all other wallets. This means that where observation of a transaction from another wallet would give a nearly guaranteed identification that the system on the other end of the link is the source, with Bitcoin Core sending a transaction is merely potentially suggestive of origination.
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>> c. When an identity/wallet is deleted, does the deletion process >> eliminate all evidence from the user's device that the wallet was previously >> installed? > Identity is primarily tied to a wallet.dat file. Deleting it will remove > most of the evidence that the wallet was installed on that device, but there > may be some extra information in ancillary files that should also be > deleted. This is an OS-level function, as there is no operation built into > the client to delete a wallet file (identity).
After review and testing we've determined that reliable deletion of private data is not very feasible on current hardware/OSes. Techniques which used to work, like overwriting are defeated by write balancing. We recommend users use OS level encryption to protect their privacy locally.
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>> Network Privacy >> 10. When a user performs a backup operation for their wallet, does >> this generate any automatic network activity, such as a web query or email? > No. Backups are local, and no email or SMS is linked. No web queries related > to backup.
Right.
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>> 11. Does your application perform any lookup external to the user’s >> device related to identifying transaction senders or recipients? > No
Not for normal transactions. Bitcoin Core currently supports payment URIs and BIP70, and if a user follows a payment URI it may instruct the user to make a connection to a location requested by the payee.
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>> 12. Does you application connect to known endpoints which would be >> visible to an ISP, such as your domain? > Yes, some connections to known p2p full nodes to bootstrap the connection to > the Bitcoin p2p network. This is configurable, but there are defaults. An > ISP is likely to be able to identify a customer as running the Bitcoin-Qt > client in particular on this basis.
Kind of. If a Bitcoin Core node already knows of peers through prior operation and is able to get at least two network connections within 11 seconds, it will make no further queries.
If a node is completely new and hasn't been otherwise configured; it will perform four DNS queries to determine lists of candidate nodes. These queries are frequently answered by caching name servers and do not go all the way back to their origins. Only if both of these step fail does it consult a hardcoded list of several hundred nodes to attempt initialization.
That said, Bitcoin traffic is easily identifiable regardless of how peers are found. We recommend users run Tor, and if tor is used no identifiable traffic should happen, except for timing/volume analysis. And many parties run Bitcoin Core nodes without running wallets; so the use of Bitcoin does not identify a user as even having a wallet at all.
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>> 13. If your application connects directly to nodes in the Bitcoin P2P >> network, does it either use an unremarkable user agent string (Bitcoin Core. >> BitcoinJ, etc), or randomize its user agent on each connection? > > > BIP12 specifies format for user agents: > https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0014.mediawiki > > It appears that the Bitcoin-QT leaks specific information about its client > version through User Agent. This file defines the current client version: > https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/55294a9fb673ab0a7c99b9c18279fe12a5a07890/src/clientversion.h > > Various other files seem to use this to build up the UA string, which is > transmitted to other peers.
Bitcoin Core is this questions _definition_ of an unremarkable useragent.
But yes, the useragent notes the major/minor version. Concealing this would have little to no privacy advantage, as functional/behavioral analysis would easily reveal the version with at least that level of precision.
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>> 14. Does the application uninstall process for your application >> eliminate all evidence from the user's device that the application was >> previously installed? Does it also eliminate wallet data? > Probably depends on the platform. Last time I checked, I think Bitcoin-Qt > leaves behind a .bitcoin directory on most platforms even after you run an > uninstall script.
If uninstall deleted the wallet it would reliably result in massive funds loss for users.
To conceal their user of Bitcoin users should at a minimum do a security erase of their system.
Other wallets who claim to "delete" private information which was previously stored on disk are likely giving their users a false sense of security. Doubly so in that many other wallets are written in dynamic lanaguages which make it impossible to prevent highly secret data from being written to system swap.
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>> 15. Does your application use techniques such as steganography to >> store persistent wallet metadata in a form not identifiable as belong to a >> Bitcoin wallet application? > No
I believe any software which claimed to do this would have to meet a rather high burden of proof.
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>> 16. Please describe the degree to which users can use passwords/PINs >> to protect their data: >> a. Can the user set a password/PIN to protect their private keys? > You can encrypt the wallet file with a password. The wallet is "locked" > until the password is entered, preventing decryption of the private keys.
Correct. And unlike some other Wallets the KDF used to harden the users key takes 100ms with efficient native code; this substantially limits attacker brute for performance.
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>> b. Can the user set a password/PIN to protect their public keys and >> balance information? > No -- any wallet.dat file can be opened and the public keys inspected > without the password. >> c. Can the user set a password/PIN to encrypt other wallet metadata, >> such as address books and transaction notes? > No -- any wallet.dat file can be opened and the metadata inspected without > the password.
We recommend users use full disk encryption. Encrypting the public data in the wallet would require the wallet to enter their key at every use and increase the probability that their key was leaked (or if two keys were used, that they'd forget their spending key).
Even if the public key information were encrypted, other data on their computer (browser cache, swap, logs) would likely compromise the user's privacy, thus the full disk encryption recommendation. Full disk encryption is a common, easily used tool; and I don't believe any wallet software that stores data locally can provide strong privacy in practice without it.
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>> d. Does the application use a single password/PIN to cover all >> protected data, or does it allow the use of multiple passwords/PINs? > A single password for the wallet file.
Right. Each wallet file can have it's own single password which protect spending.
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>> 17. Do you as a wallet provider ever have access to unencrypted copies >> of the user’s private keys, public keys, or any other wallet metadata which >> may be used to associate a user with their transactions or balances? > No custodianship.
Right.
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>> Telemetry Data >> 18. If your application reports telemetry data, such as usage >> information or automatic crash reporting, does the user have the opportunity >> to review and approve all information transmitted before it is sent? > No obvious telemetry data being sent.
No telemetry data.
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>> Source Code and Building >> 19. Can a user of your application compile the application themselves >> in a manner that produces a binary version identical to the version you >> distribute (deterministic build system)?
Yes, and a large portion of our user base does their own builds. Our determinstic build process is also actively audited by a good dozen parties who post cryptographic signatures of their duplicated builds.