research-article

Feasibility Analysis for Sybil Attacks in Shard-Based Permissionless Blockchains

Authors:

Tayebeh Rajabi,

Alvi Ataur Khalil,

Mohammad Hossein Manshaei,

Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman,

Mohammad Dakhilalian,

Maurice Ngouen,

Murtuza Jadliwala,

A. Selcuk UluagacAuthors Info & Claims

Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice, Volume 2, Issue 4

Article No.: 25, Pages 1 - 21

https://doi.org/10.1145/3618302

Published: 14 December 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Committee-based permissionless blockchain approaches overcome single leader consensus protocols’ scalability issues by partitioning the outstanding transaction set into shards and selecting multiple committees to process these transactions in parallel. However, by design, shard-based blockchain solutions are vulnerable to Sybil attacks. An adversary with enough computational/hash power can easily manipulate the consensus protocol by generating multiple valid node identifiers/IDs (i.e., multiple Sybil committee members).Despite the straightforward nature of these attacks, they have not been systematically investigated. This article fills this research gap by analyzing Sybil attacks in shard-based consensus of proof-of-work blockchain systems. Specifically, we provide a detailed analysis for Elastico, one of the prominent shard-based blockchain models. We show that the proof-of-work technique used for ID generation in the initial phase of such protocols is vulnerable to Sybil attacks when an adversary (could be a group of colluding nodes) possesses enough hash power. We analytically derive conditions for two different Sybil attacks and perform numerical simulations to validate our theoretical results under various parameters. Further, we utilize the BlockSim simulator to validate our mathematical computation, and results confirm the correctness of the analysis.

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Cited By

Abu-Dabaseh FAlghizzawi MAlkhlaifat BRatib Ezmigna AAlzghoul AAlSokkar AAl-Gasawneh J(2024)Enhancing Privacy and Security in Decentralized Social Systems: Blockchain-Based Approach2024 2nd International Conference on Cyber Resilience (ICCR)10.1109/ICCR61006.2024.10533137(1-6)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCR61006.2024.10533137
Li XWang WJin KGu H(2024)A blockchain-enabled personalized charging system for electric vehiclesTransportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies10.1016/j.trc.2024.104549161(104549)Online publication date: Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2024.104549
Lakhan AMohammed MAbdulkareem KDeveci MMarhoon HNedoma JMartinek R(2024)A multi-objectives framework for secure blockchain in fog–cloud network of vehicle-to-infrastructure applicationsKnowledge-Based Systems10.1016/j.knosys.2024.111576290(111576)Online publication date: Apr-2024
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Index Terms

Feasibility Analysis for Sybil Attacks in Shard-Based Permissionless Blockchains
1. Mathematics of computing
  1. Mathematical analysis
    1. Numerical analysis
2. Security and privacy
  1. Formal methods and theory of security
    1. Logic and verification

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Information

Published In

cover image Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice

Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice Volume 2, Issue 4

December 2023

91 pages

EISSN:2769-6480

DOI:10.1145/3637541

Editors:
Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo
University of Texas San Antonio, United States
,
Mohammad Hammoudeh
Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom

Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 December 2023

Online AM: 02 September 2023

Accepted: 16 August 2023

Revised: 17 July 2023

Received: 26 February 2023

Published in DLT Volume 2, Issue 4

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Cited By

Abu-Dabaseh FAlghizzawi MAlkhlaifat BRatib Ezmigna AAlzghoul AAlSokkar AAl-Gasawneh J(2024)Enhancing Privacy and Security in Decentralized Social Systems: Blockchain-Based Approach2024 2nd International Conference on Cyber Resilience (ICCR)10.1109/ICCR61006.2024.10533137(1-6)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCR61006.2024.10533137
Li XWang WJin KGu H(2024)A blockchain-enabled personalized charging system for electric vehiclesTransportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies10.1016/j.trc.2024.104549161(104549)Online publication date: Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2024.104549
Lakhan AMohammed MAbdulkareem KDeveci MMarhoon HNedoma JMartinek R(2024)A multi-objectives framework for secure blockchain in fog–cloud network of vehicle-to-infrastructure applicationsKnowledge-Based Systems10.1016/j.knosys.2024.111576290(111576)Online publication date: Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2024.111576
El Madhoun NHammi BEl Jaouhari SMesbah DAhmadieh E(2024)Addressing Security Challenges in Copyright Management Applications: The Blockchain PerspectiveAdvanced Information Networking and Applications10.1007/978-3-031-57942-4_18(169-182)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57942-4_18
Khalil ARahman M(2023)SHIP: Securing Hashed Timelock Contracts in Payment Channel Networks2023 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS)10.1109/CNS59707.2023.10289033(1-2)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS59707.2023.10289033

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