research-article

Power Adjusting and Bribery Racing: Novel Mining Attacks in the Bitcoin System

Authors:

Bin XiaoAuthors Info & Claims

CCS '19: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

Pages 833 - 850

https://doi.org/10.1145/3319535.3354203

Published: 06 November 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Mining attacks allow attackers to gain an unfair share of the mining reward by deviating from the honest mining strategy in the Bitcoin system. Among the most well-known are block withholding (BWH), fork after withholding (FAW), and selfish mining. In this paper, we propose two new strategies: power adjusting and bribery racing, and introduce two novel mining attacks, Power Adjusting Withholding (PAW) and Bribery Selfish Mining (BSM) adopting the new strategies. Both attacks can increase the reward of attackers. Furthermore, we show PAW can avoid the "miner's dilemma" in BWH attacks. BSM introduces a new "venal miner's dilemma", which results in all targets (bribes) willing to help the attacker but getting less reward finally. Quantitative analyses and simulations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of our attacks. We propose some countermeasures to mitigate the new attacks, but a practical and efficient solution remains to be an open problem.

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Cited By

Liu SXu YYang XHui BHu F(2024)Variable-State-Trigger: A Formal Model of Smart Contracts Based on Conditional Response and Finite State Automata and Its ApplicationElectronics10.3390/electronics1323468013:23(4680)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13234680
黄超(2024)Researcheson Security Issues of L-Stubborn Strategies in the Blockchain SystemModeling and Simulation10.12677/MOS.2024.13105613:01(576-587)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.12677/MOS.2024.131056
Liang WJiang SLi WWang Y(2024)Leading Hide Bribery Stubborn Mining AttackProceedings of the 6th ACM International Symposium on Blockchain and Secure Critical Infrastructure10.1145/3659463.3660020(1-6)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3659463.3660020
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Index Terms

Power Adjusting and Bribery Racing: Novel Mining Attacks in the Bitcoin System
1. Security and privacy
  1. Human and societal aspects of security and privacy
    1. Economics of security and privacy
  2. Systems security
    1. Distributed systems security

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cover image ACM Conferences

CCS '19: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

November 2019

2755 pages

ISBN:9781450367479

DOI:10.1145/3319535

General Chairs:
Lorenzo Cavallaro
King's College London, UK
,
Johannes Kinder
Bundeswehr University Munich, Germany
,
Program Chairs:
XiaoFeng Wang
Indiana University, USA
,
Jonathan Katz
George Mason University, USA

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGSAC: ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit, and Control

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 06 November 2019

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HK ITF
HK RGC GRF

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CCS '19

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SIGSAC

CCS '19: 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

November 11 - 15, 2019

London, United Kingdom

Acceptance Rates

CCS '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 149 of 934 submissions, 16%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,261 of 6,999 submissions, 18%

Upcoming Conference

CCS '25

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sigsac

ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

October 13 - 17, 2025

Taipei , Taiwan

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Cited By

Liu SXu YYang XHui BHu F(2024)Variable-State-Trigger: A Formal Model of Smart Contracts Based on Conditional Response and Finite State Automata and Its ApplicationElectronics10.3390/electronics1323468013:23(4680)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13234680
黄超(2024)Researcheson Security Issues of L-Stubborn Strategies in the Blockchain SystemModeling and Simulation10.12677/MOS.2024.13105613:01(576-587)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.12677/MOS.2024.131056
Liang WJiang SLi WWang Y(2024)Leading Hide Bribery Stubborn Mining AttackProceedings of the 6th ACM International Symposium on Blockchain and Secure Critical Infrastructure10.1145/3659463.3660020(1-6)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3659463.3660020
Shang JLu TZhao P(2024)SIM: Achieving High Profit Through Integration of Selfish Strategy Into Innocent MiningIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2024.343586921:6(6153-6173)Online publication date: Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSM.2024.3435869
Deng ARen QWu YLei HChen B(2024)Proof of Finalization: A Self-Fulfilling Function of BlockchainIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2024.345135519(8052-8065)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2024.3451355
Wang QLi CXia TRen YWang DZhang GChoo K(2024)Optimal Selfish Mining-Based Denial-of-Service AttackIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2023.332638619(835-850)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2023.3326386
Wang YLi CZhang YLi TNing JGai KChoo K(2024)A Detection Method Against Selfish Mining-Like Attacks Based on Ensemble Deep Learning in IoTIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2024.336768911:11(19564-19574)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2024.3367689
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
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS60910.2024.00038
Wang CRen YWu Z(2024)Multi‐Hop anonymous payment channel network based on onion routingIET Blockchain10.1049/blc2.12065Online publication date: 4-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1049/blc2.12065
Biçer OKüpçü A(2023)FORTIS: Selfish Mining Mitigation by (FOR)geable (TI)me(S)tampsDistributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice10.1145/36163972:4(1-26)Online publication date: 14-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3616397
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