pull down to refresh

Hey,

You need some peers to provide some sort of geographical diversification and more uncertainty as well as a multisig structure.

Regarding the second paragraph, say you have a multisig.

  1. Say at the best the keys are distributed between 3 persons (compared to you holding keys in different locations).
  2. Now, I wanna attack you. I put the gun to your head. You tell me it's a multisig. I say (worst case) give me the descriptor so I can examine your claim.
  3. You provide that. I say now sign this psbt and then take me to your friends (If I have not identified them before).
  4. You do as I say and I coerce them to sign as well for I have the gun.

The thing here is that the act of signing is very predictable. I put you under duress and I know the signing flow and that's all.

Now consider using Boomerang.

  1. You come to me with a gun. I tell you my bitcoins are in a boomerang. You demand proof and I provide the descriptor looking like a boomerang descriptor.
  2. You force me into calling others and convince them to do as I want or you just capture them and put them under duress as well.
  3. Now what are you facing? We are all cooperative. But neither you nor us know how much time it takes to sign the transaction of your choice. It may take 6 months or 1 year (note that this is for low velocity reserves or fallbacks and not for day to day expenditure). Added on top of that all of us peers can signal duress during this withdrawal ceremony and you won't know if we have done that. For nothing changes after a positive duress signal whatsoever. Except for the trusted entity knowing we are under duress.

Put yourself in the shoes of an attacker. Would your first choice of victim be those that have a setup that takes uncertain time to withdraw and has undetectable duress signals built in the withdrawal ceremony itself?

101 sats \ 2 replies \ @OT 14 Feb

Ok, but the trade off is that if you need to spend some of those sats you may have to wait up to 6-12 months right?

I think most of these kinds of attackers would be aiming for the lowest hanging fruit. Bitcoin on an exchange/ single sig etc.

Boomerang may be a better way for very wealthy bitcoiners to secure their stash. I think they had better understand the tech well before using it.

reply

Yes you are right. It is indeed for high value, very low velocity bitcoins under high threat. This current design does not suit common retail holdings of bitcoin.

reply

It can also be used as fallback foe Revault and Ajolote which are deleted key covenant structures. As such, that security - accessibility compromise is way more justified. For you go to fallback in those settings when your vault is already compromised.

reply