On the attacks against blockchain protocols at network layers

Abstract

This paper addresses attacks against existing blockchain protocols at various network layers. Firstly, it examines the persistence of partitioning attacks at the application layer targeting Bitcoin's peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The study confirms empirically that existing partitioning attacks struggle to last more than 10 minutes which is insufficient for damaging the Bitcoin's P2P network. Additionally, it presents an optimized partitioning attack that maximally exploits Bitcoin's peer connection mechanism, showing that even this attack has difficulty causing significant harm to Bitcoin's peer-to-peer network. This demonstrates the security strengths of the current Bitcoin protocol and identifies the characteristics contributing to its robustness. Secondly, the paper introduces network layer attacks targeting the data availability layer of Roll-ups, the most popular scalability solution in Ethereum 2.0, and assessing their risk. It confirms that network-layer adversary can effectively detect Roll-up transactions and block their propagation for about 26 seconds in stealthy manner, leading to sabotage attacks on the targeted Roll-up network by inducing unwanted challenges among honest validators in the Roll-up network. The paper analyzes the vulnerabilities in existing protocols that gave rise to the proposed attacks and suggests ways to enhance their security.