Validator Security

Each validator candidate is encouraged to run its operations independently, as diverse setups increase the resilience of the network. Validator candidates should now commence their setup phase to be on time for launch.

Sentry Nodes (DDOS Protection)

Validators are responsible for ensuring that the network can sustain denial of service attacks.

One recommended way to mitigate these risks is for validators to carefully structure their network topology in a so-called sentry node architecture.

Validator nodes should only connect to full nodes they trust, either because they run them themselves or because they are run by other validators they know socially. A validator node will typically run in a data center. Most data centers provide direct links to the networks of major cloud providers. The validator can use those links to connect to sentry nodes in the cloud. This shifts the burden of denial-of-service from the validator's node directly to its sentry nodes, and may require new sentry nodes to be spun up or activated to mitigate attacks on existing ones.

Sentry nodes can be quickly spun up or changed their IP addresses. Because the links to the sentry nodes are in private IP space, an internet-based attack cannot disturb them directly. This will ensure validator block proposals and votes always make it to the rest of the network.

To set up your sentry node architecture, you can follow the instructions below:

Validator nodes should edit their config.toml:

# Comma separated list of nodes to keep persistent connections to
# Do not add private peers to this list if you don't want them advertised
persistent_peers = [list of sentry nodes]
 
# Set true to enable the peer-exchange reactor
pex = false

Sentry Nodes should edit their config.toml:

# Comma separated list of peer IDs to keep private (will not be gossiped to other peers)
# Example ID: [email protected]:26656
 
private_peer_ids = "node_ids_of_private_peers"

Environment Variables

By default, uppercase environment variables with the following prefixes will replace lowercase command-line flags:

• AZ (for AIOZ Network flags)
• TM (for Tendermint flags)
• BC (for democli or basecli flags)

For example, the environment variable AZ_CHAIN_ID will map to the command line flag --chain-id. While explicit command-line flags will take precedence over environment variables, environment variables will take precedence over any of your configuration files. For this reason, it's imperative that you lock down your environment such that any critical parameters are defined as flags on the CLI or prevent modification of any environment variables.