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by unlimitless 3119 days ago
He didn't give the strategy as a requirement for light wallets to actually work. He gave it as an example of making the security trade off better. Light wallets do work. To fool them you have to have to be able to 51% the network and sybil my node. Not likely, especially if my spv wallet is checking multiple sources, even over https.
1 comments

No, I have to send a simple forged "alert" packet to cause you to download 1-4MB of block data plus additional dependent spend data of similar size from your peers, and lock up your CPU for an intensive amount of time doing signature verification and hash tree calculations only to find out the alert was incorrect. Meanwhile another spoofed peer sends another alert packet....
and then my wallet bans your peer and moves on. Not an issue