Dependability Analysis of Bitcoin subject to Eclipse Attacks

Abstract

The immense potential of the blockchain technology in diverse and critical applications (e.g., financial services, cryptocurrencies, supply chains, smart contracts, and automotive industry) has led to a new challenge: the dependability modeling and analysis of the blockchain-based systems. In this paper, we model the Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency system built on the blockchain technology that allows individuals to trade freely without involving banks or other intermediate agents. We analyze the dependability of the Bitcoin system subject to the Eclipse attack. A continuous-time Markov chain-based method is suggested to model the system behavior under the Eclipse attack and further quantify the dependability of the Bitcoin system. The effects of several model parameters (related to the miner’s habits in system protection, restart, and mining frequency) on the system dependability are demonstrated through numerical examples. Findings from this work may provide effective guidelines in designing a resilient and robust Bitcoin system.

Avaliação de Desempenho de Blockchains Permissionadas Hyperledger Orientada ao Planejamento de Capacidade de Recursos Computacionais

“…Em [Shahriar et al 2020] os autores usaram em Redes de Petri capazes de identificar as vulnerabilidades que podem ser exploradas e as ameac ¸as que o sistema está exposto. Os autores em [Zhou et al 2021] utilizaram uma rede CTMC para avaliar a disponibilidade de um sistema de bitcoin sob um ataque Eclipse em diferentes taxas.…”

System-Level Dependability Analysis of Bitcoin under Eclipse and 51% Attacks

“…A malicious miner can attack the blockchain consensus mechanism to tamper with Bitcoin's data (Bag et al, 2016). In addition, Bitcoin may be subject to other attacks like selfish mining (Eyal and Sirer, 2014), Sybil attacks (Zhang and Lee, 2019), 51% attacks (Bastiaan, 2015;Novoa et al, 2021), and Eclipse attacks (Heilman et al, 2015;Zhou et al, 2021a). To defend Bitcoin against those attacks, different strategies have been suggested.…”

“…Some recent efforts have been made for the quantitative analysis of dependability in Bitcoin. Specifically, in Zhou et al (2021a), a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC)-based method was proposed to model the behavior of a Bitcoin node under the Eclipse attack and further quantify the node-level dependability of Bitcoin with exponentially distributed state transition times. In Zhou et al (2021b), a semi-Markov processbased approach was proposed to analyze the steady-state dependability of a Bitcoin node with general state transition time distributions.…”

MLP-NARX Bitcoin Price Prediction Model Integrating System Identification Modelling Principles

“…First introduced in 1991 by individuals or individuals working under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that enables people to exchange value without requiring a third-party intermediary [1], [2]. The blockchain technology behind Bitcoin is a publicly distributed ledger containing a series of data blocks linked together and protected using cryptographic hash (mathematically calculated digital fingerprints unique to the data).…”