Purge attacks (spin on sabotage attacks)

Summary:

The Purge is a form of sabotage attack that aims to create coordination disincentives among Bitcoin users. In this attack, an attacker replaces the most recent blocks full of transactions with empty blocks. As a result, previously confirmed transactions return into the mempool, where anyone with a minimum of technical knowledge or access to public tools can opportunistically double-spend their transactions back to themselves. This process is similar to double-spending regular zero-conf transactions. The attack undermines trust in Bitcoin's assurances and disrupts the coordination process among users in response to the attack.By giving some users a chance to benefit from the attack, the attacker gives them a vested interest in staying on the attack chain. If enough users accept the invitation to double-spend, it might become harder to come to consensus on how to deal with the attack. Purge attacks probably don’t constitute a bigger risk than other known forms of sabotage attacks, but seem like an interesting spin where the attacker specifically targets the pre-coordination of defenders.The report provides some mitigations against sabotage attacks and can be found at https://blog.deribit.com/insights/destabilizing-bitcoin-consensus-with-purge-attacks/. It is important to note that your feedback regarding this issue is highly appreciated.

Updated on: 2023-06-13T23:23:02.447354+00:00