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The coordinator is currently vital to the operation of the Iota network. There are both security (leaking the seed used to generate milestones) and availability (it must be able to issue milestones) impacts if it were to be successfully attacked.

There are obvious attacks:

  • Denial-of-service - this would prevent milestones from being issued, which in turn would cause the network to stop working.
  • Any remotely exploitable vulnerability in the system (from remote code execution through to weak passwords) could allow the seed to be leaked.
  • Physical access - someone with access to the server could steal the seed.

Are there any more subtle or interesting attacks that could be carried out with knowledge of the IP or location of the coordinator?

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    Can people who downvote please explain why they are downvoting. This question is entirely sensible given the role of the coordinator.
    – Cybergibbons
    Jul 24, 2018 at 8:50
  • 2
    I didn't downvote (yet), but IMO you are making too many assumptions here about a concept (the COO) for which there is no public information. All we know is that there are milestones on the tangle those milestones are considered as checkpoints by IRI. Is the COO on a server ? on a public network ? with a static IP ? (in other words, what you pointed out as "obvious attacks" aren't so obvious)
    – ben75
    Jul 24, 2018 at 12:30
  • Why don't you answer your own question, instead of enumerating the possible answers in it? (It's fine to post answers to own questions in SE, in case someone is wondering.)
    – kfx
    Jul 24, 2018 at 15:04
  • Does the Physical access attack assume that no special hardware (e.g. Sentinel HASP) is used?
    – Come-from-Beyond
    Jul 24, 2018 at 20:12
  • No, but hardware isn't infallible either.
    – Cybergibbons
    Jul 24, 2018 at 21:18

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