Bitcoin Network Probing Tool
Sometimes you want to query information a Bitcoin node, e.g. the type of client it uses or its current timestamp.
./bcclient 86.151.93.192
[INFO]: Sending version message
[INFO]: Version received. peer=86.151.93.192:8333.2, useragent=/Satoshi:0.13.1/, timestamp=1479927567, localtime=1479927580
Sometimes you want to make several parallel connections to the same node
./bcclient -n2 86.151.93.192
Sometime you want to receive blocks/transactions from a peer and print them in real time
./bcclient -l inv -l tx 86.151.93.192
Or you want to query a node about peers it is aware of by sending a 'getaddr' message:
./bcclient -s getaddr -l addr -l idle 86.151.93.192
Or you want to send a bogus block:
./bcclient -s block -l idle 86.151.93.192 # '-l idle' keeps the connection open
This kind of information is hard to get/send using the core Bitcoin client which motivates the development of this Bitcoin network-probing client. This software was used when testing the attack described the following papers:
[1] Alex Biryukov, Ivan Pustogarov. Bitcoin over Tor isn’t a good Idea. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2015.
[2] Alex Biryukov, Dmitry Khovratovich, Ivan Pustogarov. Deanonymisation of Clients in Bitcoin P2P Network. ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security 2014 (ACM CCS): 15-29
Compile Instructions
This software relies on a specific commit of libbitcoin (and probably will not work with other commits). This specific commit is included and you have to compile it first.
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool libboost-all-dev pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev libleveldb-dev shtool
$ cd libbitcoin
$ ln -s $(which shtool)
$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure --enable-leveldb
$ make
$ cd ../
$ make
I tested the tool in Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu14.04, and Debian 8.4. If it does not compile, you might want to try older version of libboost.
Using with testnet
By default the tool works only with mainnet. You will need to recompile it to work testnet.
$ make clean
$ cd libbitcoin
$ make clean
$ ./configure --enable-leveldb --enable-testnet
$ make
$ cd ../
$ make
Remember to use '-p 18333' (default is 8333)
Using with Tor
In order to use "./bcclient" program through tor and use a specific Exit node, you can use the following configuration;
Launch Tor on on a separate local machine with the following lines in torrc:
ExitNodes <exit-node-name>
StrictExitNodes 1
SocksPort <your-torproxy:9100>
Install badvpn
Create new tuntap interface:
$sudo ip tuntap add dev tun0 mode tun
$sudo ip link set tun0 up
$sudo ip addr add 10.0.0.1/24 dev tun0
$badvpn-tun2socks --tundev tun0 --netif-ipaddr 10.0.0.2 --netif-netmask 255.255.255.0 --socks-server-addr <your-torproxy>:9100
$sudo route del default
$sudo route add default gw 10.0.0.2
In order to put everything back:
$sudo route del default
$sudo route add default gw 10.91.0.1
$sudo ip tuntap del dev tun0 mode tun
Output format
When ./bcclient receives a transaction it prints by default it in a succinct way. In order to include fields description, use '-v' flag.
BC:14iyH71Y9kEDUXdQCytizPNTvFNAUUn3do