There is a concept of “data juggling”, it’s very clever, there was a guy a couple of years ago who thought: What if I make use of latency with protocols on the internet to put data online by “juggling it around”? This is kind of an abuse of internet protocols. It’s hard to explain, but the data would be “kept moving” on the internet, making use of servers keeping data “in transit” for some time. http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/juggling_with_packets.txt
In theory, could this be used as an attack on the SAFE Network? I could create a “false” vault and offer resources to earn safecoins. Then I would put data on the SAFE Network. At a certain time my vault receives a get request. I would not be able to answer the get request (intentionally). But because the get request would come later in time (In the meantime, I would have already put my data on the SAFE Network, and retreived it). Then I would create a new “false” vault, etc. Could I swallow all storage space in the SAFE Network by multiplying this, like a DoS attack? Or could I “juggle data” around by abusing the “create vault” mechanism automatically?
The network automatically Juggles the content that it has, but the vaults don’t have any idea what they have, and don’t have any ability to choose what data they are given. They don’t get paid at all for storing data, only for delivering it back to folks who request it.
So in short, No, I don’t think this kind of attack would be of any use on SAFE.
OK, I get that. You say it costs to PUT data on the SAFE network.
What if I would create a false request to PUT data on the SAFE Network? Without having any Safecoins? How long before the network will find out that my request is false? How far would that request go before it was denied?
In fact, your node would likely be immediately disconnected, if it were even able to achieve a working connection in the first place.
I recommend reading the wiki over (first 4 sections at least) and perhaps listen to the lesson of the SAFE Network School series of the SAFE Crossroads podcast. (To plug my own efforts at broad education. The class series in particular and the other episodes in general, give more perspective than just the wiki by itself.)
It takes some work to get the whole picture, but that’s the place to start.