This is a submission for DEV's Summer Bug Smash: Smash Stories powered by Sentry.
The setting
py-libp2p speaks Kademlia — a distributed hash table where every node keeps a routing table of other nodes, bucketed by how far their IDs sit from its own. You find a peer or a record by asking the nodes closest to the target, who point you closer, and closer, until you arrive. It's elegant, and it works because of one quiet assumption: the peers in your routing table are a fair sample of the network.
An eclipse attack breaks exactly that assumption. If an attacker can get their nodes into enough of your routing buckets — specifically the closest-K slots for a target key — they don't need to break any crypto. They just surround you. Every lookup you make gets answered by them. They can hide records, feed you stale routing, or silently partition you from the real DHT. You're still online. You're still "connected." You're just connected to a lie.
Signing authenticates the record, not the routing table
