Wednesday, Jan 08 2020
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Time-Dilation Attacks on Offchain Protocols:
Time-Dilation Attacks on Offchain Protocols =================================== Lightning works on reversing the double-spend problem to a private state between parties instead of being a public issue verified by every network peer. The security model is based on revocation of previous states and in case of broadcast of any of them, being aware of it to generate justice transactions to claim misbehaving peer onchain outputs before contest period expiration. This period is driven by the blockchain which is here the system clock. Eclipse attacks's end-goal is to monopolize a victim's incoming and outgoing connections, by this way isolating a node from the rest of its peers in the network. A successful Eclipse attacks lets the attacker filter the victim's view of the blockchain, i.e he controls transactions and blocks announcements [0]. Every LN node must be tied to a bitcoin full-node or light-client to verify independently channels opening/closing, HTLCs expiration and previous/latest state broadcast. To operate securely, the view of the blockchain must be up-to-date with the one shared with the rest of the network. By considering Eclipse attacks on the base layer, this assumption can be broken.