Sybil Attack - Reading Assignment

Bitcoin Attacks
#1

Answer these questions:

  1. What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
  2. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?
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#2
  1. The general idea of a sybil attack is one identity posing as many to disrupt a peer to peer network.
  2. I think the anonimity of addresses and nodes in a cryptocurrency network can allow a sybil attack to occur, but the PoW of bitcoin can make it too expensive…
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#3

  1. A node gets fed all bad information by all it’s peers being corrupt.

  2. Lack of changing peers.

1 Like
#4

1. What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
On a p2p network to create as much identities as possible (by a single entity) to gain influence in that network. This is possible if creating identities is very cheap.

2. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?
When you have a network that depends on a voting system, the more identities you can have in the network, the more votes you can cast and the more influence you have inside that network.
Also in a POS system (and if it’s cheap to buy in or if you have a lot of money) that only allows 1 entity to buy a max nr of stakes. If you can create multipe entities you can covertly buy more stakes than allowed and gain more influence than others on the network.

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#5

  1. I person controlling many identities on a Peer to peer network with the intent to control the nodes on the network.

  2. The ability to create multiple unidentified identities linked to 1 person and that person’s ability if they have large sums of money to control the nodes voting on the peer to peer system.

#6
  1. I think the general idea of a Sybil attach is for one entity to produce many identities and thus gain an advantage over the network and become a nefarious actor/person in a Cryptocurrency network. Correct?
  2. I would imagine that a network glitch/bug that allows for more than one identity to be created per entity will enable a Sybil attack. Correct?
#7

Sybil Attacks

A sybil attack is just faking more Identities to influence a network or a community.
Somone with fake acounts liking some social media post is also a sybil attack.
Any voting system is vulnarable to this where you don't have proof of an unique identity.
If 2 EOS blockproducers would be actually 1 and the same person, It would be a perfect example :-)
Everone should have some primary key (or better a Natural key) a personal signature. This key should be unique and protected in a decentralized cryptographical way and use it to "sign".
DID's are a also a cool way to proof yourself in a zero-knowledge way :-)

greetz Fabrice
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#8

I remember a chinese video where some people were manipulating some community with hundreds of different cellphones per person in some “sybil” factory.

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#9

1.one user creates many identitys
2. it is very easy to create new identitys

#10

  1. The general idea of a sybil attack is to pretend to be another/ many identities. So you´re creating more than one account and try to influence the community. Very common in telegram, with the ICO´s and all the bots in it.

  2. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur? It´s easy to create more than one identity, because it´s mostly anonymously.

#11

  1. The general idea of a sybil attack is that one person can create multiple accounts in a peer to peer network to increase their influence.

  2. One deficiency could be a poor consensus algorithm. For example, if voting amongst the network was purely 1 user = 1 vote. We have consensus algorithms that are already very good at preventing sybil attacks such as PoW, PoS, and DPoS.

1 Like
#12
  1. In a Sybill attack an attacker subverts the reputation of a system by creating a large number of accounts which are used to gain influence.
  2. The deficiencies in a state that allow a Sybill attack are the cost / effort to create identities and the amount influence allowed by entitled without a trust score.
1 Like
#13

1. What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
To create multiple accounts to influence a third-party account.

2. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?
When it is easy (low cost and simple) to create many identities with minimal disproportionately high rewards vs low/non-existing punishment for bad actors.

#14

One person can create multiple accounts in the network to increase their influence.
Lack of changing peers/computers and when it is easy to create many identities.

1 Like
#15

1
build as many different users in a p2p network so you can control it and have a lot of influence/enough influence to attach it.

2
(easy) ability to create new users in the network
voting system without proof of a unique identity

#16
  1. A sybil attack on a P2P network is executed when an entity is posing as many identities (if created very cheap) to gain greater influence.
  2. When the cryptocurrency network allows it’s voters to create multiple identities.
1 Like
#17

  1. What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
    That one person can create more than one identitities and manipulate the community with this.

  2. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?
    When it’s easy to create more than one account on the platform.

#18

1 The idea of a Sybil attack is a one identity create as much identities as possible to compromised a peer to peer network and corrupt the system by fed with false information, data.

2 a Sybil attack can caused some issues in a peer to peer network, like for example one identity held more than one with false infomation to gain more influence, corrupt inside, get more votes in that network.
more entities means as well more stakes than allows, however the proof of work shows that it is more dificult to lead a sybil attack due to to the fact that it’s more expensive , possible more attack on POS network cost are cheaper.

#19
  1. to pretend having several id/nodes using just one real one, to be able to influence/fake reputation/voting/validation/trust of the supposed to be consensus rules.
  2. not having a centralized controller to assert about the validity/uniqueness of a neighbor id/node, having to decide by own consensus rules one could be attacked if all surrounding id/nodes are fake ones
#20

Hi, i see on the curse about sybil attacks, and that seems the same as eclipse attack.

maybe i’m wrong, but that’s the feeling i get when i see the explanation on the video.

please see the difference about eclipse and sybil attack here: