Abstract
Bitcoin-NG, introduced by Eyal et al. in NSDI 2016, divides a blockchain into key-blocks and micro-blocks to improve transaction process efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel attack on Bitcoin-NG, called a micro-block chain truncation attack. Combined with key-block selfish and stubborn mining, and an eclipse attack, this attack is able to bring extra reward to attackers in Bitcoin-NG than in Bitcoin through a colluded strategy or a “destroyed if no stake” strategy. Our evaluation calculates the reward proportion of an attacker by these attacks on both Bitcoin-NG and Bitcoin, which helps us figure out whether Bitcoin-NG sacrifices security for efficiency promotion. We also evaluate 18 strategy combinations by traversing different values of computation power and practical truncation rate. In a setting with reasonable parameters, the optimal combined micro-block chain truncation attack obtains at most 5.28% more reward proportion in Bitcoin-NG than in Bitcoin.
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Acknowledgment
This work is partly supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFB1400700), National Cryptography Development Fund (MMJJ20180215), and CCF-NSFOCUS KunPeng Research Fund (2018013).
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Wang, Z. et al. (2019). A Combined Micro-block Chain Truncation Attack on Bitcoin-NG. In: Jang-Jaccard, J., Guo, F. (eds) Information Security and Privacy. ACISP 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11547. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21548-4_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21548-4_18
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