JMCER

Identifying the Impacts of Majority Cyberattack on Distributed Ledger and Blockchain

  • Received
    April 1, 2024
  • Revised
    June 2, 2024
  • Accepted
    June 13, 2024
  • Published
    July 7, 2024

Authors

  • Najla B. Aldabagh
  • Yasir A. Hamza
  • Nashwan S. Ali

Abstract

During the last decade, the financial sector has transformed into digital platform by digitizing all their financial services. As a result of this transformation, a new term “Fintech” has appeared that means combining finance and technology together. In addition, a new type of currency, which called cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, has become popular for using as an alternative to physical currencies. Using such currencies in financial transactions and working in unsecure and open accessed environment like internet may be led to several problems and threats related to security objectives of participated parties in such transactions. Therefore, blockchain that based on DLT is best approach for securing the financial transactions. In despite of these features of DLT, it has exposed to different types of cyberattacks. In this study, the most well-known majority or 51% cyberattack on DLT has been carefully investigated. According to results of the study, this cyberattack impacts the security objectives for the transactions of parties that are participated on the blockchain network such as (privacy, data integrity, system integrity, availability, authenticity, authorization and accountability). In addition, the adversary is able to apply 51% cyberattack successfully even if has computational power less than 50.

Keywords

51% cyberattack, blockchain, distributed ledger technology, Impact, Majority cyberattack

References

Anthony Jnr, B., 2023. A developed distributed ledger technology architectural layer framework for decentralized governance implementation in virtual enterprise. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 21(3), pp.437-470. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-023-00634-2

Aponte-Novoa, F.A., Orozco, A.L.S., Villanueva-Polanco, R. and Wightman, P., 2021. The 51% attack on blockchains: A mining behavior study. IEEE access, 9, pp.140549-140564. 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3119291

Binance Academy, 51% Attack, Accessed: Nov. 11, 2023.Available:https://academy.binance.com/en/glossary/51-percent-attack

Dasgupta, D., Shrein, J.M. and Gupta, K.D., 2019. A survey of blockchain from security perspective. Journal of Banking and Financial Technology, 3, pp.1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42786-018-00002-6

Deshpande, A., Stewart, K., Lepetit, L. and Gunashekar, S., 2017. Distributed Ledger Technologies/Blockchain: Challenges, opportunities and the prospects for standards. Overview report The British Standards Institution (BSI), 40, p.40.

Gojka, E.E., Kannengießer, N., Sturm, B., Bartsch, J. and Sunyaev, A., 2021. Security in distributed ledger technology: An analysis of vulnerabilities and attack vectors. In Intelligent Computing: Proceedings of the 2021 Computing Conference, Volume 3 (pp. 722-742). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80129-8_50

Hamza, Y.A. and Abduallah, W.M., 2020, April. A Secured Method of Reversible Data Hiding. In 2020 International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSASE) (pp. 61-66). IEEE. DOI:  10.1109/CSASE48920.2020.9142098

Kadam, S., 2018, March. Review of distributed ledgers: The technological advances behind cryptocurrency. In International Conference Advances in Computer Technology and Management (ICACTM).

Khan, M.D., Schaefer, D. and Milisavljevic-Syed, J., 2022. A review of distributed ledger technologies in the machine economy: challenges and opportunities in industry and research. Procedia CIRP, 107, pp.1168-1173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2022.05.126

König, L., Unger, S., Kieseberg, P., Tjoa, S. and Blockchains, J.R.C., 2020. The Risks of the Blockchain A Review on Current Vulnerabilities and Attacks. J. Internet Serv. Inf. Secur., 10(3), pp.110-127.

Lemieux, V.L., 2017, November. Blockchain and distributed ledgers as trusted recordkeeping systems. In Future technologies conference (FTC) (Vol. 2017).

Nakamoto, S., 2008. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

Nicolas, K., Wang, Y. and Giakos, G.C., 2019, September. Comprehensive overview of selfish mining and double spending attack countermeasures. In 2019 IEEE 40th Sarnoff Symposium (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Nicolas, K., Wang, Y., Giakos, G.C., Wei, B. and Shen, H., 2020. Blockchain system defensive overview for double-spend and selfish mining attacks: A systematic approach. IEEE Access, 9, pp.3838-3857. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3047365

Priem, R., 2020. Distributed ledger technology for securities clearing and settlement: benefits, risks, and regulatory implications. Financial Innovation, 6(1), p.11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40854-019-0169-6

Rauchs, M., Glidden, A., Gordon, B., Pieters, G.C., Recanatini, M., Rostand, F., Vagneur, K. and Zhang, B.Z., 2018. Distributed ledger technology systems: A conceptual framework. Available at SSRN3230013. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3230013

S. K. Krause, K. Solvej, H. Natarajan, H. L. Gradstein, “Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain,” (English). FinTech note, no.1 Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/177911513714062215/Distributed-Ledger-Technology-DLT-and-blockchain

Saad, M., Spaulding, J., Njilla, L., Kamhoua, C., Shetty, S., Nyang, D. and Mohaisen, D., 2020. Exploring the attack surface of blockchain: A comprehensive survey. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 22(3), pp.1977-2008.

Sayeed, S. and Marco-Gisbert, H., 2019. Assessing blockchain consensus and security mechanisms against the 51% attack. Applied sciences, 9(9), p.1788.

Soltani, R., Zaman, M., Joshi, R. and Sampalli, S., 2022. Distributed ledger technologies and their applications: A review. Applied Sciences, 12(15), p.7898. https://doi.org/10.3390/app12157898

Stallings W., “Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice,” Global Edition, 8th edition, Published by Pearson, 2022.

Wang, C., Dohler, M., López, D., Forbes, R., Steiff, S., Faisal, T., Backia, M., Liu, Q. and Arribas, I., 2022. An Introduction of Permissioned Distributed Ledger (PDL). ETSI White Paper, (48),pp.1-12. etsi.org/images/files/ETSIWhitePapers/ETSI-WP48-PDL.pdf

[fbcomments]