Abstract
Blockchain is a well-known distributed technology which can be regarded as a decentralized database and combines the peer-to-peer architecture, cryptography and consensus mechanism. As the first and most famous application of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin also suffers from different kinds of attacks. Several studies have been done to analyze and solve these attacks. In this paper, we research the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) on Bitcoin’s memory pool (Mempool). We analyze the feasibility of this kind of attack based on the current mining and relay progress of Bitcoin, and propose the possible effects caused by this attack from some novel aspects of Bitcoin, including the confirmation time, market price and legitimate user. We further present the Dynamic Fee Threshold Mechanism to counter this attack. Our method uses several characteristics to distinguish the normal transactions in Bitcoin from the malicious spam transactions. We also make an analysis and experiments on the method, to demonstrate its effectiveness and accuracy of detecting the malicious transactions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Decker, C., Wattenhofer, R.: Information propagation in the bitcoin network. In: IEEE P2P Proceedings, pp. 1–10. IEEE (2013)
Bitcoin, N.S.: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Manubot (2019)
Wood, G.: Ethereum: a secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger. Ethereum Project Yellow Paper 2014(151), 1–32 (2014)
Saad, M., Njilla, L., Kamhoua, C., et al.: Mempool optimization for defending against DDoS attacks in PoW-based blockchain systems. In: 2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC). IEEE (2019)
Jung, W., Park, S.: Preventing DDoS attack in blockchain system using dynamic transaction limit volume. Int. J. Control Autom. 10(12), 131–138 (2017)
Community, B.: Developer’s Guide, Confirmation Score, Transaction Fee and Miner Fee, Minimum Relay Fee, UTXO, Memory Pool, Child Pays for Parent, Raw Transactions (2018). https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/
Vasek, M., Thornton, M., Moore, T.: Empirical analysis of denial-of-service attacks in the bitcoin ecosystem. In: Böhme, R., Brenner, M., Moore, T., Smith, M. (eds.) FC 2014. LNCS, vol. 8438, pp. 57–71. Springer, Heidelberg (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44774-1_5
Johnson, B., Laszka, A., Grossklags, J., Vasek, M., Moore, T.: Game-theoretic analysis of DDoS attacks against bitcoin mining pools. In: Böhme, R., Brenner, M., Moore, T., Smith, M. (eds.) FC 2014. LNCS, vol. 8438, pp. 72–86. Springer, Heidelberg (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44774-1_6
Baqer, K., Huang, D.Y., McCoy, D., Weaver, N.: Stressing out: bitcoin “Stress Testing”. In: Clark, J., Meiklejohn, S., Ryan, P.Y.A., Wallach, D., Brenner, M., Rohloff, K. (eds.) FC 2016. LNCS, vol. 9604, pp. 3–18. Springer, Heidelberg (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53357-4_1
Memoria, F.: 700 Million Stuck in 115, 000 Unconfirmed Bitcoin Transactions. (2017). https://goo.gl/mYX14V. Accessed Mar 2017
B. Community: Bitcoin Data from Blockchain. info (2020). https://www.blockchain.com/charts
Zamani, M., Movahedi, M., Raykova, M.: Rapidchain: Scaling blockchain via full sharding. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 931–948 (2018)
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (No. 2020B010164003), the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou, China (No. 201904010209), and the Science and Technology Program of Guangdong Province, China (No. 2017A010101039).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Luo, S., Sang, Y., Song, M., Zeng, Y. (2021). Preventing DDoS Attacks on Bitcoin Memory Pool by the Dynamic Fee Threshold Mechanism. In: Zhang, Y., Xu, Y., Tian, H. (eds) Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies. PDCAT 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12606. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69244-5_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69244-5_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-69243-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-69244-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)