Exploring Partitioning Attacks on the Bitcoin Network

Bitcoin is the leading example of a blockchain application that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions without the need for a trusted third party. This paper considers possible attacks related to the decentralized network architecture of Bitcoin. We perform a data driven study of Bitcoin and present...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE/ACM transactions on networking Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 202 - 214
Main Authors Saad, Muhammad, Cook, Victor, Nguyen, Lan, Thai, My T., Mohaisen, David
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York IEEE 01.02.2022
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects
Bitcoin
Blockchains
Computer architecture
Computer security
Cryptography
Digital currencies
distributed computing
Internet
Network analysis
network security
Organizations
Partitioning
Peer-to-peer computing
Software
Synchronization
Trusted third parties
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Summary:Bitcoin is the leading example of a blockchain application that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions without the need for a trusted third party. This paper considers possible attacks related to the decentralized network architecture of Bitcoin. We perform a data driven study of Bitcoin and present possible attacks based on spatial and temporal characteristics of its network. Towards that, we revisit the prior work, dedicated to the study of centralization of Bitcoin nodes over the Internet, through a fine-grained analysis of network distribution, and highlight the increasing centralization of the Bitcoin network over time. As a result, we show that Bitcoin is vulnerable to spatial, temporal, spatio-temporal, and logical partitioning attacks with an increased attack feasibility due to the network dynamics. We verify our observations through data-driven analyses and simulations, and discuss the implications of each attack on the Bitcoin network. We conclude with suggested countermeasures.
ISSN:1063-6692
1558-2566
DOI:10.1109/TNET.2021.3105604