The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers (전기학회논문지)

The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers (대한전기학회)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Feasibility Analysis of Majority Attacks on Blockchains

블록체인에 있어 다수 공격에 대한 타당성 분석

  • Kim, Il-Hwan (Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Kangwon National University)
  • Received : 2018.10.22
  • Accepted : 2018.11.03
  • Published : 2018.12.01
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

In this research, 51% attack or majority attack is becoming an important security issue for proof of work based blockchains. Due to decentralized nature of blockchains, any attacks that shutdowns the network or which take control over the network is hard to prevent and assess. In this paper, different types of majority attack are summarized and the motivations behind the attacks are explained. To show the feasibility of the majority attack, we build an example mining machines that can take control over two of the public blockchains, Vertcoin and Monero.

Keywords

References

  1. S. Nakamoto, "Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system", URL http://bitcoin.org, 2008.
  2. J. Yli-Huumo, D. Ko, S. Choi, S. S. Park, and K. Smolander, "Where is current research on blockchain technology? - A systematic review", PLOS ONE, vol. 11, no. 10, 2016.
  3. X. Li, P. Jiang, T. Chen, X. Luo, and Q. Wen, "A survey on the security of blockchain systems", Future Generation Computer Systems, 2017.
  4. A. Gervais, "On the security, Performance and Privacy of Proof of Work Blockchains", Doctoral Thesis, ETH Zurich, 2016.
  5. A. Sapirshtein, Y. Sompolinsky, and A. Zohar, "Optimal selfish mining strategies in bitcoin", In International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, pp. 515-532, 2016.
  6. I. Eyal and E. G. Sirer, "Majority is not enough: Bitcoin mining is vulnerable", Communications of the ACM, vol. 61, no. 7, pp. 95-102, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1145/3212998
  7. http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_timestamp
  8. http://litecoin.info/index.php/Time_warp_attack
  9. M. Conoscenti, A. Vetro and J. C. De Martin, "Blockchain for the Internet of Things: A systematic literature review", In Computer Systems and Applications International Conference, pp. 1-6, 2016.
  10. D. Meshkov, A. Chepurnoy and M. Jansen, "Short Paper: Revisiting Difficulty Control for Blockchain Systems. In Data Privacy Management, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology", Springer, pp. 429-436, 2017.
  11. http://vertcoin.org
  12. http://getmonero.org
  13. http://www.ethdocs.org/en/latest/