networked communication

decentralized System

Bitcoin operates on blockchains, which are designed to be decentralized. [1] By making it decentralized, the information is verified by all stakeholders involved in the event, or transaction. This characteristic contributes to the reliability of the cryptocurrency since more stability is brought to the entire system as the change of a single-point failure is reduced.

Another benefit of a decentralized system is that everyone can download the chain and verify the transactions, which can bring trust to systems such as a banking system. The traditional way of starting a bank requires strong financial and connection support and undergoes a highly complicated process, a form of proof of stake [2]. But, with the support of cryptography techniques, trust and security can be more easily gained from utilizing blockchain since faking data requires Proof of Work. To fake Proof of Work, more than 50% of the blockchain users would have to work together to corrupt existing blocks or prevent new blocks from being recorded. This is called a "51% attack" [3, 4].

The documentary also states that the second version of the Silk Road website, Silk Road 2.0, is built in a decentralized fashion. This makes Silk Road resilient to being shut down by the government, as not all of the website data and infrastructure is located in the same place. Shutting down decentralized websites is like a whack-a-mole game, as shown in the Societal Conclusions page.

snapshoting endpoint server of tor network

In the movie, there is a plot that the FBI found that the Silk Road server was located in Iceland, but how the FBI found the server is questioned as the many layers of anonymity and security provided by the Tor connection that multiple jumps to even reach the target server. This secure Tor connection is still built upon the end server providing response to the requests. Thus, it is obvious how risky it is to store all of the Silk Road's data into one back-end server, which further proves the benefits of a distributed server and storage method, with well-running permission control, as it strongly mitigates the problem brought on by a single-point failure.

The FBI alleges that they used CAPTCHA to access the Silk Road's server. Even though this method and feasibility of accessing the server is questioned, the viewer is still reminded about the risk brought on by third-party services, in exchange to its convenience. Now, Google also requires websites to either show a reCAPTCHA logo or display a message, saying "This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply".

Image from reference 5

References

[1] Craig, Ben R., and Joseph Kachovec. “Bitcoin’s Decentralized Decision Structure.” Economic Commentary, no. 2019–12, July 2019. doi. 10.26509/frbc-ec-201912.

[2] The standards applicable to national banks (including licensing requirements). 12 Mar. 2019, https://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/charters-and-licensing/index-charters-licensing.html. Retrieved 10/1/2021

[3] “51% Attacks.” MIT Digital Currency Initiative, https://dci.mit.edu/51-attacks. Retrieved 10/1/2021.

[4] Ye, Congcong, et al. “Analysis of Security in Blockchain: Case Study in 51%-Attack Detecting.” 2018 5th International Conference on Dependable Systems and Their Applications (DSA), 2018, pp. 15–24. IEEE Xplore, doi. 10.1109/DSA.2018.00015.

[5] Antonatos, Spiros, et al. “Honey@home: A New Approach to Large-Scale Threat Monitoring.” Proceedings of the 2007 ACM Workshop on Recurring Malcode - WORM ’07, ACM Press, 2007, p. 38. DOI.org (Crossref), doi. 10.1145/1314389.1314398.

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