An Evaluation of the Security of the Bitcoin Peer-To-Peer Network
| Title | An Evaluation of the Security of the Bitcoin Peer-To-Peer Network |
| Publication Type | Conference Paper |
| Year of Publication | 2018 |
| Authors | Tapsell, James, Naeem Akram, Raja, Markantonakis, Konstantinos |
| Conference Name | 2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData) |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| ISBN Number | 978-1-5386-7975-3 |
| Keywords | bitcoin, bitcoin core software, bitcoin message exchanges, bitcoin mining process, Bitcoin peer-to-peer network, blockchain, Computer crime, computer network security, cryptocurrencies, cryptographic protocols, data mining, DDoS Attacks, denial of service, distributed denial of service attacks, Human Behavior, human factor, human factors, Metrics, network message exchanges, network protocol, P2P network, peer to peer security, Peer-to-peer computing, Protocols, pubcrawl, resilience, Resiliency, Scalability, security evaluation, service attacks, Software, transaction confirmation process |
| Abstract | Underpinning the operation of Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer (P2P) network [1] that facilitates the execution of transactions by end users, as well as the transaction confirmation process known as bitcoin mining. The security of this P2P network is vital for the currency to function and subversion of the underlying network can lead to attacks on bitcoin users including theft of bitcoins, manipulation of the mining process and denial of service (DoS). As part of this paper the network protocol and bitcoin core software are analysed, with three bitcoin message exchanges (the connection handshake, GETHEADERS/HEADERS and MEMPOOL/INV) found to be potentially vulnerable to spoofing and use in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Possible solutions to the identified weaknesses and vulnerabilities are evaluated, such as the introduction of random nonces into network messages exchanges. |
| URL | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8726695 |
| DOI | 10.1109/Cybermatics_2018.2018.00195 |
| Citation Key | tapsell_evaluation_2018 |
- Human Factors
- transaction confirmation process
- Software
- service attacks
- Security Evaluation
- Scalability
- Resiliency
- resilience
- pubcrawl
- Protocols
- Peer-to-peer computing
- peer to peer security
- P2P network
- network protocol
- network message exchanges
- Metrics
- bitcoin
- human factor
- Human behavior
- distributed denial of service attacks
- denial of service
- DDoS Attacks
- Data mining
- Cryptographic Protocols
- cryptocurrencies
- computer network security
- Computer crime
- blockchain
- Bitcoin peer-to-peer network
- bitcoin mining process
- bitcoin message exchanges
- bitcoin core software