Re: [Tails-dev] Update Electrum documentation for Tails 1.8 …

Delete this message

Reply to this message
Autore: sajolida
Data:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list, mjenglish, s7r
Oggetto: Re: [Tails-dev] Update Electrum documentation for Tails 1.8 upgrade to version 2.5.4
Michael English:
> Sajolida, please forward this message to s7r.


Done.

> s7r,
>
> If you do not have any specific ideas for updating the Electrum
> documentation, I volunteer to take the lead. Otherwise, you can draft an
> updated version of the documentation and I can update where necessary.
> The goal is to document Electrum specifically for Tails and not
> duplicate the existing Electrum wiki.


Thanks for the offer.

> Most of the updates like wallet format happen automatically in the
> background, so they do not need to be documented. I only recommend
> making two additions.
>
> The most obvious change to the user when updating Electrum versions is
> that the default base unit changes which can be confusing. No, I do not
> think that we should manually change the default base unit with a config
> file. That decision should be made upstream. However, users should be
> aware that the appearance of their Bitcoin balances changes especially
> when sending Bitcoins.


If I understand correctly, the main issue here is about the *change*
(and not about the behavior itself), then this should be mentioned most
of all in the release notes. If you think that the behavior itself might
be confusing, then I guess that this should be solved upstream (in their
documentation or the software directly).

> DoS refers to the SPV vulnerability of servers withholding information
> from their clients leading to an incorrect balance. Connecting to a
> trusted .onion server protects against DoS. Yes, it is not a bug, but it
> is a well-known limitation of SPV that is specifically relevant for Tor
> users. Pleas read “Bitcoin over Tor is not a good idea”
> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.6079.pdf .


That's what I thought. Thanks for the clarification. I'm not a Bitcoin
user myself but we discussed this back when we added Electrum to Tails.

>> Thanks for the input. I'd like to see whoever is working on the update
>> to 2.5.4 propose patches to the current documentation [1]. Then I don't
>> mind editing and polishing it but I won't have time to do the
>> investigation part myself. So thanks for starting it.
>>
>> - How would people "manually select a trusted .onion server"?
>> - Where can people find "a trusted .onion server"?
>> - How should our current warning about SPV be adapted?


^ You're not answering this.

I'm also wondering whether we should instead configure Electrum in Tails
to connect to the existing onion servers automatically instead. So:

  - Would it be possible to configure Electrum in Tails to use the
    existing onion servers on top of the usual servers? instead of the
    usual servers?
  - In that case, do we need to trust them all?
  - What happens if some of them go down?