Bitcoin Core Privacy Fix Enters 32.x Branch
Key Summary
Bitcoin Core has merged a privacy fix into its 32.x source branch to address the correlation of private-broadcast connections with ordinary node connections. The backport for 31.x remains open, leaving users who enabled the feature on the latest stable release, 31.1, awaiting the repair. The fix separates behaviors, excluding private-broadcast peers from normal discouragement handling and discouraging misbehaving private peers from disconnecting other connections. This change addresses observable effects of peer handling and reduces risk for users.
Introduction
Bitcoin Core has merged a privacy fix into its 32.x source branch addressing behavior that could correlate private-broadcast connections with ordinary node connections.Current State
The backport for 31.x remains open as of Oct. 8, leaving users who enable the feature on the latest stable release, 31.1, awaiting the repair. Private broadcast is disabled by default.Background
The Oct. 1 backport includes the original change, which reached the main development branch on Sept. 25. A separate proposal to bring the fix to 31.x received an approval from reviewer vasild on Oct. 6 and carries a 31.2 milestone.Users enable the privatebroadcast option for submissions through sendrawtransaction, the command for sending a raw transaction to the network. This path uses dedicated, short-lived connections to Tor or I2P peers, or to IPv4 and IPv6 peers through Tor.