Known issues

WARNING: The Go Filecoin implementation is a work in progress.

go-filecoin is development-ready, but not production ready. The majority of development focus to date has been on the block-chain and protocol building blocks. There are a number of security and scaling issues that we are yet to shake out.

This implementation is evolving from a prototype to a reference implementation. You should carefully consider the work-in-progress state of this effort when deciding whether and how to run a filecoin node.

Specific known security shortcomings we have yet to resolve include, but are not limited to:

• Bootstrapping is not secure, e.g. there is nothing to prevent a eclipse attack.
• There is no mechanism to mitigate spamming by bad players in the network.
• Keys in the wallet are not encrypted.
• The proofs implementation is incomplete.
• Protocol implementations are incomplete, including
  • incomplete consensus rules (blocks not signed, tickets not properly checked, no finality),
  • no slashing for bad behavior,
  • no penalties for miners omitting a proof, mining power isn't verified.
• The HTTP RPC endpoints are not secured. Anyone who can open a connection to the RPC API port of the node can issue requests, including administrative actions and transfers of value.
• Inputs are not sanitised; bad input can likely panic the node.
• Content checking is not strictly enforced.
• Client data is not encrypted by default.
• Some caches grow without bound, presenting a DOS vector.
• Faucet rate limiting is primitive and not difficult to subvert.
• Dashboard statistics are easy to pollute.

When performing new work, contributors should observe stronger security-consciousness, including being sure that:

• DOS vectors are identified and defended (e.g. caches cannot grow infinitely);
• unexpected or malformed inputs cannot cause a panic or the process to exit;
• information, including error messages, cannot not leak, for example in a network message;
• content reference by content identifier is validated as having that identifier.

Having said all this, we invite and welcome contribution of issues for specific problems in the code. If you notice a security issue please label it with the i-security label. If you notice a scaling issue please label it with the i-scaling label.