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Claymore released the newest version of his miner for XMR, version 9.7, and among one of the features introduced is "- added SSL/TLS encryption support for better security..."

I see one incentive to mine using that connection being a reduced fee, down to 2% now, I also get that encryption improves security, but so far I haven't seen any pools offering SSL/TLS support aside from the one listed as a default in his miner.

My question is, what are the pros and cons of this SSL/TLS vs normal connections to pools that the majority of miners use? If non-encrypted connections are unsecured, to what risks, major or minor is one exposed for using such a connection?

Thank you for your time and information in advance!

xMrace
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1 Answers1

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It's less about the security of the data moving across the connection than about the authentication of the remote server. When you have the TLS fingerprint for the pool server set up in your miner configuration, such as with XMR-STAK, then you can be assured that the pool is the same one as last time you connected, and nobody has hijacked the domain name or some such in order to steal your hashrate.

Michael Pelletier
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