Implications of Dissemination Strategies on the Security of Distributed Ledgers

TL;DR

This study uses simulation to analyze how dissemination strategies in Distributed Ledger Technologies affect their vulnerability to Sybil attacks, highlighting the impact of protocol choice and peer connections.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how dissemination protocols and network topology influence DLT security against Sybil attacks.

Findings

Dissemination protocol choice affects attack resistance.

Number of peer connections influences security.

Protocol and topology impact Sybil attack vulnerability.

Abstract

This paper describes a simulation study on security attacks over Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs). We specifically focus on attacks at the underlying peer-to-peer layer of these systems, that is in charge of disseminating messages containing data and transaction to be spread among all participants. In particular, we consider the Sybil attack, according to which a malicious node creates many Sybils that drop messages coming from a specific attacked node, or even all messages from honest nodes. Our study shows that the selection of the specific dissemination protocol, as well as the amount of connections each peer has, have an influence on the resistance to this attack.