Alice in Blockchains: Surprising Security Pitfalls in PoW and PoS Blockchain Systems
Title | Alice in Blockchains: Surprising Security Pitfalls in PoW and PoS Blockchain Systems |
Publication Type | Conference Paper |
Year of Publication | 2017 |
Authors | Keenan, T. P. |
Conference Name | 2017 15th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST) |
Date Published | aug |
ISBN Number | 978-1-5386-2487-6 |
Keywords | bitcoin, Bitcoin exchanges, blockchain, blockchain technology, Companies, contracts, cryptography, ecosystem issues, electronic money, expert systems, financial data processing, governance, Hacking, human factors, human misbehavior, mathematical basis, nonfinancial applications, PoS, PoS blockchain systems, PoW, PoW blockchain systems, privacy, pubcrawl, Scalability, security, security pitfalls, software defects, vulnerabilities |
Abstract | If, as most experts agree, the mathematical basis of major blockchain systems is (probably if not provably) sound, why do they have a bad reputation? Human misbehavior (such as failed Bitcoin exchanges) accounts for some of the issues, but there are also deeper and more interesting vulnerabilities here. These include design faults and code-level implementation defects, ecosystem issues (such as wallets), as well as approaches such as the "51% attack" all of which can compromise the integrity of blockchain systems. With particular attention to the emerging non-financial applications of blockchain technology, this paper demonstrates the kinds of attacks that are possible and provides suggestions for minimizing the risks involved. |
URL | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8476964 |
DOI | 10.1109/PST.2017.00057 |
Citation Key | keenan_alice_2017 |
- human misbehavior
- vulnerabilities
- software defects
- security pitfalls
- security
- Scalability
- pubcrawl
- privacy
- PoW blockchain systems
- PoW
- PoS blockchain systems
- PoS
- nonfinancial applications
- mathematical basis
- bitcoin
- Human Factors
- Hacking
- Governance
- financial data processing
- expert systems
- electronic money
- ecosystem issues
- Cryptography
- contracts
- Companies
- blockchain technology
- blockchain
- Bitcoin exchanges