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

Yes, waiting for block confirmations is an easier way to protect against
an out-of-date bitcoin balance than manually connecting to a trusted
onion server. I still hold my opinion that the Electrum networking
settings are the best way to protect against DoS, but it unnecessarily
complicated for little risk. I actually recommended that we document
block confirmations in March of this year when we first installed
Electrum in Tails:
“For my documentation, I already explained the concept of a
double-spending attack to you. In the case of the Electrum DoS attack,
the double-spend would be a 0 confirmation transaction. The solution is
to wait for block confirmations to make sure that you actually have the
money. Remember: 'An SPV node cannot be persuaded that a transaction
exists in a block when the transaction does not in fact exist. The SPV
node establishes the existence of a transaction in a block by
requesting a merkle path proof and by validating the proof of work in
the chain of blocks.'”

If we make the documentation too long, users might not actually read it.
Also, Tails purpose is to provide a secure operating system and not to
provide a complete security guide. I completely agree with focusing on
documentation that is specific to Tails and then linking elsewhere for
more information. Otherwise, we would have imbalanced priorities.

Cheers,
Michael English

sajolida:
> I worked on an update to the current documentation in branch
> doc/9713-electrum-2.5. I tried to combined everybody's input while
> sticking to the minimum as per our guidelines.
>
> I'm sorry I won't reply inline to the different topics raised in this
> thread, but here is a summary:
>
> 1. Give more emphasis on external backup of the seed in addition to
> using persistence, as suggested by s7r.
> 2. Apply the grammar fixes and phrasings suggested by Michael.
> 3. Make the warning about SPV less scary and more useful by focusing on
> transaction confirmation. I was quite convinced by the details provided
> by s7r but tell me if I misinterpreted something.
> 4. Add a tip about mBTC.
>
> I didn't include s7r's suggestion to explain better what an Electrum
> server is, what it can do and what it cannot do. I think this is out of
> the scope in the Tails doc, while it clearly fits better in the upstream
> doc. I understand that some of your points were specific to Tails, but
> still, I think we found a configuration in Tails that doesn't make the
> security discussion radically different than outside of Tails (which was
> the goal). If we think this discussion about the Tails context is worth
> been written somewhere it should be done in our design documentation.
> But honestly, I feel very lazy to do this and I'm not sure it's worth it.
>
> Tell me what you think or if I missed anything. And thanks for your
> patience and for doing the research and discussion without me.
>