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Bitcoin's cryptologic is open-source; it doesn't have to be secure from tampering in the same way a videogame console has to be secure. A videogame console does
by smtddr 12y ago
Bitcoin's cryptologic is open-source; it doesn't have to be secure from tampering in the same way a videogame console has to be secure. A videogame console doesn't want you modifying game code or running your own code on the hardware. Nobody cares what you do to your bitcoin client; you'll just lose your coins in some invalid[1] transaction or maybe you find some amazing flaw in bitcoin's math - which you could have found in any other programming language anyway.
That said, a browser-based bitcoin client does expose its user to potential XSS exploits 'n such; especially if the private key is in the browser's memory.
1. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Raw_Transactions https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Raw_Transactions , basically if you mess this stuff up you lose coins.
- ForHackernews 12y agoThat's a fair point, except that (contrary to "Nobody cares what you do to your bitcoin client"), I would suggest that most people do not have their own bitcoin client, and are in fact running code written by somebody else. Those users will likely be very upset if a client loses all their coins.
- jadeddrag 12y agoOr, if there is a large enough user base running some faulty logic, this could cause a big ugly fork in the blockchain. Not good.
- yafujifide 12y agoYes, that is the primary concern. "We" in the bitcoin community haven't yet figured out how to write 100% correct alternative implementations of bitcoin. We will have to figure out how to do that first before I would ever recommend anybody actually run an alternative implementation as a full node and rely on it for seeing the blockchain.