Japanese Cryptocurrency Monacoin Hit by Selfish Mining Attack
Advertisement
Between May 13th and 15th, Monacoin, a cryptocurrency developed in Japan, appears to have suffered from a network attack that caused roughly $90,000 in damages.
The attack appears to have been a selfish mining attack, where one miner successfully mines a block on the blockchain but does not broadcast the new block to other miners. If the secret miner can then find a second block before the rest of the miners find any new blocks, then the secret miner has now effectively created a branch in the chain that is longer than the chain everyone else is working on.
As is standard in most blockchain protocols, the chain with more blocks is considered by the mining network to be the correct chain, as it has the most “proof of work.” So, when the secret miner makes their longer chain public, it invalidates any and all of the blocks discovered by other miners during the time the secret chain was hidden.
Source: Reddit
A selfish mining attack can be pure vandalism, destroying blocks that become “orphaned” when the selfish miner broadcasts their chain on the network. Or, it’s possible that someone in possession of a hidden chain could profit from the attack. If the selfish miner makes transactions on the soon to be destroyed chain and receive their purchase in some form or another before the transaction is invalidated, then they have effectively never paid.
In this case, it seems the attacker tried sending Monacoin to exchanges outside of Japan, such as Livecoin, to swap them for other currencies before the hidden chains were revealed. The miner, still unknown at this point, had enough computing power to take as much as 57% of the hashrate at one point in order to execute on this attack.
It appears the attacker had been trying for half a year to attempt to exploit a weakness in the way Monacoin adjusts its difficulty.
On the developer’s official Twitter, they said on May 18th that they “grasped the attack”, but have not posted since then a clear statement on proposed solutions. However other sources indicate that developers are currently working with exchanges on a plan to roll back the Monacoin blockchain to a point before the attack occurred.
攻撃については把握しました。
— monacoinproject (@tcejorpniocanom) May 17, 2018
As of May 19th, Japan time, the attack is no longer occurring, but most exchanges have halted all deposits while they work on fixes to prevent possible future similar attacks. Monacoin balances held in wallets are considered safe.
Every blockchain, including Bitcoin, is constantly readjusting how difficult it is to mine blocks so that it is neither too easy nor too hard, depending on the amount of miners working on blocks. However, sizable blockchains like Bitcoin may be less vulnerable because of the scale of their blockchain and the networks that work on them.
While Monacoin may be more vulnerable because of either its size or its particular algorithms, in theory many cryptocurrencies could be vulnerable to similar attacks. Many cryptocurrency communities are watching to see how the attack on Monacoin plays out to see what can be learned so as to strengthen their own networks.
Featured Image from Shutterstock
相關文章
- Goal2: buy 85 mining, I now have 74 mining and I believeGo
- padding oracle attack相關之padding oracle attackpaddingOracle
- Coinhoarders Steal $50 Million in Cryptocurrency Using Google AdsGo
- Spark FPGrowth (Frequent Pattern Mining)Spark
- Intent scheme URL attackIntentScheme
- 鄉村探險畫素遊戲Japanese Rural Life Adventure遊戲
- Unsortbin attack原理及分析
- Data Mining的十種分析方法
- linux symbolic link attack tutorialLinuxSymbol
- HTTP Slow Attack測試工具SlowHTTPTestHTTP
- Archive log mining steps(logminer to html)HiveHTML
- What is Data Mining 什麼是資料探勘
- Top 16 Machine Learning, Data Mining, and NLP BooksMac
- 【SEED Labs】DNS Rebinding Attack LabDNS
- Bitcoin Node Numbers Fall After Spam Transaction "Attack"
- 常回家看看之largebin_attack
- puschitz
- Tahiti
- Architecture
- Wordpress 3.8.2補丁分析 HMAC timing attackMac
- Fishing for Hackers: Analysis of a Linux Server AttackLinuxServer
- 【機器學習】李宏毅——Adversarial Attack(對抗攻擊)機器學習
- CSAPP-Lab03 Attack Lab 記錄APP
- KRYPTON RECOVERS FROM A NEW TYPE OF 51% NETWORK ATTACK
- Linux/Unix System Level Attack、Privilege Escalation(undone)Linux
- Linux.BackDoor.Chikdos/Elknot Attack And Defense AnalysisLinux
- 比特幣與山寨幣的數字貨幣交易庫 CCXT——CryptoCurrency eXchange比特幣
- HDFS Architecture
- Process Architecture
- Oracle ArchitectureOracle
- website architectureWeb
- Hit Ratio For ORACLEOracle
- The Architecture of NginxNginx
- 人機介面裝置攻擊(HID Attack)
- padding oracle attack相關之CBC模式paddingOracle模式
- [譯] Architecture Components 之 Guide to App ArchitectureGUIIDEAPP
- ORA-55507: Encountered mining error during Flashback Transaction BackoutError
- 【Option】部署安裝Oracle 10g的Data Mining元件Oracle 10g元件