Peer-observer: A tool and infrastructure for monitoring the Bitcoin P2P network for attacks and anomalies

The Peer Observer project, as outlined on its project page, serves as a platform for sharing updates, facilitating discussions, and gathering ideas for further monitoring. The project employs "honeypot nodes" to monitor network activities, which necessitates certain privacy measures. For instance, the web front end of the project is not publicly available to prevent the identification of these nodes through their data. However, a list of the nodes along with their configurations is accessible on public.peer.observer, where interested individuals can also find a fork-observer instance connected to these nodes at public.peer.observer/forks/.

In an effort to enhance accessibility and transparency, plans are in place to establish a demo instance featuring public dashboards and data, including IP addresses. This move acknowledges the potential risk of attracting unwanted interference but is seen as a step towards inviting broader engagement with the project. The software tools developed for the project are open to the public on GitHub, with the main tooling available at github.com/0xB10C/peer-observer and a NixOS package plus module at github.com/0xb10c/nix for running the tooling.

Though the detailed infrastructure configuration used for deploying and managing the tools—comprising integrations with Prometheus and Grafana, among other things—is not yet published, there is an intention to make it public. Such a move aims to simplify the replication of the setup by others, making it easier for anyone interested to run a similar system. Currently, running the system independently is feasible, but the forthcoming publication of the infrastructure configuration is expected to lower barriers for those looking to mirror the original setup.