Attacks on Bitcoin

Speaker/Bio

Nabeel is an undergraduate researcher working under Professor Trachtenberg in the NISLab. His main fields of interest are Bitcoin, blockchain technologies and distributed systems. His current research work is on full node mempool synchronization and how it can improve compact block propagation.

Abstract

The Bitcoin network is growing faster everyday, especially with the newly founded interest from large banks, governments and media. Currently Bitcoin has a 71 billion USD market cap giving more than enough incentive for attackers to try and hijack the network. The Bitcoin network has proved its resilience over the last 8 years. But as Bitcoin becomes mainstream with millions of unprepared users, protecting the network is essential. The presentation will cover some well known attacks as well as new attacks on Bitcoin and the current defenses in place. In the presentation we will breakdown a potentially devastating BGP attack that partitions significant parts of the Bitcoin Network as well as explain a block propagation delay attack.