research-article

Revisiting Nakamoto Consensus in Asynchronous Networks: A Comprehensive Analysis of Bitcoin Safety and ChainQuality

Authors:

Srivatsan Ravi,

David MohaisenAuthors Info & Claims

CCS '21: Proceedings of the 2021 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

Pages 988 - 1005

https://doi.org/10.1145/3460120.3484561

Published: 13 November 2021 Publication History

Abstract

The Bitcoin blockchain safety relies on strong network synchrony. Therefore, violating the blockchain safety requires strong adversaries that control a mining pool with 51% hash rate. In this paper, we show that the network synchrony does not hold in the real world Bitcoin network which can be exploited to lower the cost of various attacks that violate the blockchain safety and chain quality. Towards that, first we construct the Bitcoin ideal functionality to formally specify its ideal execution model in a synchronous network. We then develop a large-scale data collection system through which we connect with more than 36K IP addresses of the Bitcoin nodes and identify 359 mining nodes. We contrast the ideal functionality against the real world measurements to expose the network anomalies that can be exploited to optimize the existing attacks. Particularly, we observe a non-uniform block propagation pattern among the mining nodes showing that the Bitcoin network is asynchronous in practice.

To realize the threat of an asynchronous network, we present the HashSplit attack that allows an adversary to orchestrate concurrent mining on multiple branches of the blockchain to violate common prefix and chain quality properties. We also propose the attack countermeasures by tweaking Bitcoin Core to model the Bitcoin ideal functionality. Our measurements, theoretical modeling, proposed attack, and countermeasures open new directions in the security evaluation of Bitcoin and similar blockchain systems.

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Index Terms

Revisiting Nakamoto Consensus in Asynchronous Networks: A Comprehensive Analysis of Bitcoin Safety and ChainQuality
1. Security and privacy
  1. Systems security
    1. Distributed systems security

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cover image ACM Conferences

CCS '21: Proceedings of the 2021 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

November 2021

3558 pages

ISBN:9781450384544

DOI:10.1145/3460120

General Chairs:
Yongdae Kim
KAIST, Republic of Korea
,
Jong Kim
POSTECH, Republic of Korea
,
Program Chairs:
Giovanni Vigna
University of California, Santa Barbara / VMware, USA
,
Elaine Shi
Carnegie Mellon University, USA

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Published: 13 November 2021

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CCS '21: 2021 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

November 15 - 19, 2021

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https://doi.org/10.1109/TSC.2023.3322203
Zheng JHuang HZheng ZGuo S(2024)Adaptive Double-Spending Attacks on PoW-Based BlockchainsIEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2023.326866821:3(1098-1110)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2023.3268668
Tran Mvon Arx TVanbever L(2024)Routing Attacks on Cryptocurrency Mining Pools2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)10.1109/SP54263.2024.00254(3805-3821)Online publication date: 19-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/SP54263.2024.00254
Wang SYang MCao JLing ZTang QFu X(2024)CORE: Transaction Commit-Controlled Release of Private Data Over Blockchains2024 IEEE 44th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS)10.1109/ICDCS60910.2024.00038(322-332)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2024
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Saad MAnwar ARavi SMohaisen D(2023)Revisiting Nakamoto Consensus in Asynchronous Networks: A Comprehensive Analysis of Bitcoin Safety and Chain QualityIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2023.330295532:1(844-858)Online publication date: 21-Aug-2023
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