If you want to tamper with content on the web, the idea that content is fingerprinted in IPFS is a huge deal.
IPNS (the name service) then becomes the vulnerability, but that is also distributed.
IPNS (the name service) then becomes the vulnerability, but that is also distributed.
It does protect against DDOS, since old content remains visible and online but if the private key is leaked or the node is malicious, it has exactly 0 protection.
Even worse, if the private key is stolen, you can't do much about it unless you have DNS setup... which brings you back to centralized.
On Ethereum you can model complex PKI which IPFS nodes can utilize to validate IPNS data.
IPNS data should be signed by external keys you can revoke and manage. Or ideally even encrypted.
No content is changed, only the pointer to the "newest" data.
In the same way you could still use the old IP + header manipulation if someone took over a Domain in DNS, it's possible and you can use the old site but in reality you're gonna have lots of people on the malicious attacker's site.
> since old content remains visible and online but if the private key is leaked or the node is malicious, it has exactly 0 protection
The old content remains visible and online if the private key is leaked, afaik.
I think there was some discussion about having there be a chain, so each updated entry would point back to the previous one. I'm not sure where that is (and if it is) on the roadmap now, but that would also allow users to go back to a known good version. This mitigates some, though not all, problems.
The problem is that content that is not access becomes garbage collected and that links and listings will most likely not point towards the hash itself and instead at the IPNS entry.
It doesn't have much more protection than a DNS entry if the private key is stolen; you could use the last known IP but it's not very practical and might eventually become dead if the IP changes.
In the same way, the old content may remain online after an attacker takes over and people could continue using it but it only remains online if people are using it. If the attack remains unknown for long enough there is no previous version IIRC.
>I think there was some discussion about having there be a chain
Still same problem, if the private key gets leaked, a malicious attacker can manipulate the entries on the chain.
The real solution is something like Swarm or Filecoin where Users can actually encourage keeping old versions around, something IPFS lacks atm. Theoretically any IPFS link can become dead once it's no longer used, which is a problem.
Merely putting the entries on chain solves little, you need to actually encourage archiving of data to get resilient against attacks.
Even then, you would also need some sort of PKI, where someone can set a master key which authorizes other nodes to manipulate content and can also revoke that. This allows to easily fight off attacks based on leaked private keys.
However, the PKI should remain largely private, not much different to Bitcoin Cold and Hot Wallets.
> you need to actually encourage archiving of data to get resilient against attacks.
Yes, but this feels like a distinct issue. Neither of these things are enough on their own (encouraging mirrors or providing the tech to distribute the hosting).
Yes but the entire web points to the wrong files since you no longer own the IPNS location.
It's similar to loosing access to your DNS configuration or loosing your GPG keys to an attacker.
Along with a link to all previous versions if there's a chain. And anyone pointing to a specific version will still see that rather than the new one.
> It's similar to loosing access to your DNS configuration
Yes.
> or loosing your GPG keys to an attacker.
I think that's a bit strong.
> >I think there was some discussion about having there be a chain
> Still same problem, if the private key gets leaked, a malicious attacker can manipulate the entries on the chain.
I'm really not sure that's right, IPNS doesn't give you the ability to edit content.
That's an IPFS Hash tho, not IPNS. Differences matter.
>I think that's a bit strong.
Over time your IPNS could very well become your identity, linked everywhere in the net.
>IPNS doesn't give you the ability to edit content.
That is correct, but you can point at arbitrary content.
It's basically the equivalent to controlling the DNS A entry to a website, they can't modify the content and it's available under the same IP but they can still do a shitload of bad stuff because few people bother to actually link IP addresses.