Blockchain Economic Denial of Sustainability Attack: Exploiting Latency Optimization in Ethereum Transaction Forwarding

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2408.01508v1
• Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2024 18:06:33 GMT
• Title: Blockchain Economic Denial of Sustainability Attack: Exploiting Latency Optimization in Ethereum Transaction Forwarding
• Authors: Taro Tsuchiya, Liyi Zhou, Kaihua Qin, Arthur Gervais, Nicolas Christin,
• Abstract summary: Economic Denial of Sustainability (EDoS) attack can cause financial losses in traffic costs for operators of modified nodes. We show that an attacker can amplify network traffic at modified nodes by a factor of 3,600, and cause economic damages 13,800 times greater than the amount needed to carry out the attack.
• Score: 13.13413794919346
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Abstract: Strategies related to the blockchain concept of Extractable Value (MEV/BEV), such as arbitrage, front- or back-running create an economic incentive for network nodes to reduce latency, including minimizing transaction validation time -- a core feature to secure blockchain networks. A modified node, that neglects to filter invalid transactions in the Ethereum P2P network, introduces novel attack vectors. In this work, we formalize and evaluate a Blockchain Economic Denial of Sustainability (EDoS) attack, which can cause financial losses in traffic costs for operators of modified nodes. We 1) mathematically define the attack model, 2) identify thousands of empirical instances of this similar attack in the wild, 3) empirically measure the model parameters from our two monitoring nodes, and 4) conduct attack simulations on the local network to compare its performance with existing Denial-of-Service attacks. We show that an attacker can amplify network traffic at modified nodes by a factor of 3,600, and cause economic damages 13,800 times greater than the amount needed to carry out the attack. Despite these risks, aggressive latency reduction may still be profitable enough to justify the existence of modified nodes. To assess this trade-off, we 1) simulate the transaction validation process in the local network and 2) empirically measure the latency reduction by deploying our modified node in the Ethereum testnet. We conclude with a cost-benefit analysis of skipping validation and provide mitigation strategies against this attack.

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