An Empirical Analysis of Privacy in the Lightning Network

Kappos, George; Yousaf, Haaroon; Piotrowska, Ania M.; Kanjalkar, Sanket; Delgado-Segura, Sergi; Miller, Andrew; Meiklejohn, Sarah

doi:10.1007/978-3-662-64322-8_8

Cited by 36 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Probing allows an attacker to reveal the balance of any forwarding channel (assuming no multi-channel hops) by sending probes through it [14,17,44]. A probe is a payment with amount a that contains a random value instead of a payment hash.…”

Section: Attacks On Lightningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The goal of the attacker is to reveal exact channel balances in target hops as quickly as possible. 17 The attacker only uses public knowledge about nodes and channels. The attacker can run multiple LN nodes, open channels, and maintain them for the duration of the attack.…”

Section: Probing Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Snapshots should be frequent because payments that pass through the same hop distort the picture. Prior work [17] has shown that 30-second snapshots allow revealing payments with 66% success rate, assuming low network usage (2000 payments per day). Obtaining a full network snapshot so quickly is challenging: each probe takes a few seconds.…”

Section: Payment Flow Inferencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, attacks on LN privacy have been described, including balance probing. Probing allows for cheaply revealing channel balances by sending fake payments (probes) [7,14,17,44]. It can be used as a building block to spy on payments or to deanonymize users.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Analysis and Probing of Parallel Channels in the Lightning Network

Biryukov

Naumenko

Tikhomirov

2022

Financial Cryptography and Data Security

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Bitcoin can process only a few transactions per second, which is insufficient for a global payment network. The Lightning Network (LN) aims to address this challenge. The LN allows for low-latency bitcoin transfers through a network of payment channels. In contrast to regular Bitcoin transactions, payments in the LN are not globally broadcast. Thus it may improve not only Bitcoin's scalability but also privacy. However, the probing attack allows an adversary to discover channel balances, threatening users' privacy. Prior work on probing did not account for the possibility of multiple (parallel) channels between two nodes. Naive probing algorithms yield false results for parallel channels. In this work, we develop a new probing model that accurately accounts for parallel channels. We describe jamming-enhanced probing that allows for full balance information extraction in multi-channel hops, which was impossible with earlier probing methods. We quantify the attacker's information gain and propose an optimized algorithm for choosing probe amounts for multi-channel hops. We demonstrate its efficiency based on real-world data using our own probing-focused LN simulator. Finally, we discuss countermeasures such as new forwarding strategies, intra-hop payment split, rebalancing, and unannounced channels.

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Section: Attacks On Lightningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Probing Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Payment Flow Inferencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Analysis and Probing of Parallel Channels in the Lightning Network

Biryukov

Naumenko

Tikhomirov

2022

Financial Cryptography and Data Security

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“…In the computer science literature, papers have focused on the financial viability of the LN (e.g., Béres, Seres, and Benczúr (2019) and Brânzei, Segal-Halevi, and Zohar (2017)); its network struc-ture (e.g., Lin et al (2020) and Martinazzi and Flori (2020)); and its ability to guarantee security and privacy (e.g., Harris and Zohar (2020), Kappos et al (2021), and Pérez-Solà et al ( 2020)).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

Divakaruni

Zimmerman

2022

Working Paper (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland)

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The Lightning Network (LN) is a means of netting Bitcoin payments outside the blockchain. We find a significant association between LN adoption and reduced blockchain congestion, suggesting that the LN has helped improve the efficiency of Bitcoin as a means of payment. This improvement cannot be explained by other factors, such as changes in demand or the adoption of SegWit. We find mixed evidence on whether increased centralization in the Lightning Network has improved its efficiency. Our findings have implications for the future of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment and their environmental footprint.

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The blockchain conundrum: An in‐depth examination of challenges, contributing technologies, and alternatives

Reshi,

Sholla

2023

Concurrency and Computation

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SummaryThe accelerated development of information and communication technologies has generated a demand for data storage that is effective, transparent, immutable, and secure. Distributed ledger technology and encryption techniques such as hashing and blockchain technology revolutionised the landscape by meeting these requirements. However, blockchain must overcome obstacles such as low latency, throughput, and scalability for its full potential. Investigating blockchain's structure, types, challenges, promises, and variants is necessary to understand blockchain and its capabilities comprehensively. This paper overviews various aspects, such as emergent blockchain protocols, models, concepts, and trends. We classify blockchain variants into five essential categories, DAG, TDAG, Sharding, Consensus, and Combining methods, based on the structure each follows, and conduct a comparative analysis. In addition, we explore current research tendencies. As technology progresses, it is essential to comprehend the fundamental requirements for blockchain development.

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An Empirical Analysis of Privacy in the Lightning Network

Cited by 36 publications

References 35 publications

Analysis and Probing of Parallel Channels in the Lightning Network

Analysis and Probing of Parallel Channels in the Lightning Network

The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

The blockchain conundrum: An in‐depth examination of challenges, contributing technologies, and alternatives

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