Unveiling Vulnerabilities in Bitcoin's Misbehavior-Score Mechanism: Attack and Defense

Yuwen Zou, Wenjun Fan*, Zhen Ma

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book or Report/Conference proceedingConference Proceedingpeer-review

Abstract

The Bitcoin network is susceptible to various attacks due to its openness, decentralization, and plaintext connections. Bitcoin created a misbehavior-score mechanism for monitoring and tracking peer misconduct. In this paper, we uncover several vulnerabilities of this mechanism, leading to potential Bitcoin-Message-based Denial-of-Service (BitMsg-DoS) attacks on Bitcoin nodes and Slander attacks by maligning innocent nodes. We prototype these attacks for our experiments by testing real nodes connected to the Bitcoin main network (while we do not exfiltrate our attacks to the real-world main network). The experimental results show that the attacks exert varying degrees of impact on mining and non-mining nodes, notably reducing mining rates by up to half for affected mining nodes and decreasing the synchronization speed of blocks for non-mining nodes. To address these drawbacks, this study proposes corresponding countermeasures targeting the identified vulnerabilities in the misbehavior-score mechanism. Furthermore, we explore the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) encrypted transport protocol with experimental support in the latest Bitcoin Core 26.0, but find it insufficient in mitigating the Slander attacks.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationARES 2024 - 19th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, Proceedings
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9798400717185
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Aug 2024
Event19th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES 2024 - Vienna, Austria
Duration: 30 Jul 20242 Aug 2024

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference19th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES 2024
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityVienna
Period30/07/242/08/24

Keywords

  • Bitcoin
  • Blockchain Security
  • DoS Attack
  • Misbehavior-Score Mechanism
  • P2P Network
  • Slander Attack

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