Sybil Attack - Reading Assignment

Bitcoin Attacks
#102

Q1.what is the general idea of a Sybil Attack?

An entity creates multiple identities.
In Sybil Attack the attacker subverts the reputation system of a network by creating a large number of pseudonymous (false) identities in order to gain disproportionately large influence on the network.

Q2. What deficiencies within a system ( such as a cryptocurrency network ) can allow a Sybil Attack to occur?

A reputation system’s vulnerability to a Sybil Attack depends on how cheaply identities can be generated, the degree to which the reputation system treats all entities identically.
Proof of work ( like in Bitcoin) can be used to make Sybil Attacks more expensive.

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#103

  1. In a Sybill attack, the attacker subverts the reputation of a system by creating a many false accounts which are used to gain influence.

  2. The ability to create multiple, anonymous identities.

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#104

A sybil attack is were some entity is getting a lot of false identities and using them to get influence on an network by manipulating the reputationsystem.

It can look as if the voting comes from one single entity (node) but in fact there are several nodes en thus votes coming from one entity. And so it can control a large part of the network

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#105
  • What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
    That one bad machine can masquerade as many different machines using routing tricks. This defeats any distributed algorithm based on assuming a fixed fraction of the processes are bad.
  • What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?
    -if it’s easy and cheap to generate identities
    -the degree to which the reputation system accepts inputs from entities that do not have a chain of trust linking them to a trusted entity
    -whether the reputation system treats all entities identically
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#106

  1. What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
    The general idea of a Sybil attack is multiple identities for one person. This allows an adversary to assume multiple attack vectors or to present themselves as many different entities in order to assume majority control over a network.

  2. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?
    Deficiencies in a crytpocurrency network are that anonymity are among some of the highest priorities, therefore there i nothing stopping an adversary from creating many identities on the network and assuming a significant amount of control over the network. i.ee there would be no way to determine whether at least 51% of the network was owned by different entities or by one entity with many identities.

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#107

  1. The general idea of a sybil attack is where an individual will represent him or her self many users in a community or a network of people, thus making his ideas seem bigger than they really are. He would be able to gain more influence in this network of people.

  2. One deficiency may be the lack of the cryptocurrency network vetting individuals to a point where a sybil attack would not be possible.

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#108
  1. When one person is running multiple nodes in a network.
  2. A person with a majority of hash power in PoW or stake in a PoS system could gain control over the network.
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#109

1: A Sybil attack occurs when one attacker creates multiple identities on a peer to network creating a greater influence o the network.

2: When the costs of creating identities is very low and risks also very low for creating identities

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#110
  • What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
  • What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?

A sybil attack refers to the method of isolation a node on the network by controlling all the nearest nodes. It is done by creating multiple seemingly legitimate identities on the network and is more likely to occur the easier it is to create such entities. This is more of a security issue on Peer to Peer networks.
In a cryptocurrency network a Sybil attack might try to convince a node to allow a double spend by giving it false information but it would eventually be found out by the whole network in which case the offending nodes would be cut off communication. The PoW system makes this kind of attack almost impossible without majority hash-power. In PoS depending on the size of the network it might be possible to make this attack through financial influence.

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#111

  1. The general concept of a Sybil attack on a peer to peer network is to create as many identities as possible (by a single entity) to gain influence within that network.

  2. One deficiency would be when there is a design/programming/network or combination “bug/defect” that will allow more than 1 entity to be created for more than one identity. One example comes to mind - is the carbon ink on the old school credit card forms from the '80s where the paper would stay behind or thrown away but can still be used to get the credit cardholder’s information still. Hence why businesses creating a carbonless form due to high levels of fraud in the retail sector.

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#112
  1. What is the general idea of a sybil attack?

General idea of a sybil attack is subversion of the network service reputation system by creating multiple identities and using them to gain a disproportionately large influence.

  1. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?

„A reputation system’s vulnerability to a Sybil attack depends on how cheaply identities can be generated, the degree to which the reputation system accepts inputs from entities that do not have a chain of trust linking them to a trusted entity, and whether the reputation system treats all entities identically. „ In regards to cryptocurrencies, sybil attack is a security threat if somebody runs multiple nodes on a blockchain network.

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#113
  1. Someone creates many identities to flood and confuse the network and get more influence.
  2. The attack method is cheap and simple in a system of voting.
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#114
  1. In general, a sybil attack is controlling enough of a network to be able to control who sees what information.
  2. The deficiencies in a cryptocurrency network that can allow sybil attacks is the way that all nodes communicate. Since there is no way to see who operates a node, one node cannot tell who to trust for broadcasting accurate transactions or blocks.
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#115

  1. The general idea of a Sybil attack is to use as many identities as possible to corrupt the target which could be a network or community.

  2. There are different types of deficiencies within a system such as a cryptocurrency network that can allow a Sybil attack to occur for example a voting system which uses accounts without proof of a unique identity or there are low requirements (easy, low cost) to create as many identities as possible.

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#116
  1. One subversive entity posing as many to overwhelm a system
  2. Susceptibility of an attacked system is proportional to its knowledge of the identity of incoming requests, (chain of trust) whether or not the system treats all access requests as equal and the amount of effort or cost required to create the attacking multitude of entities.
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#117

  1. What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
    The idea is to use many identities for a single entity which can allow that entity to have much more influence than it should on a P2P network.

  2. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?
    The inability to identify or validate users in a network makes easier for sybil attacks to occur because they rely on the network treating their new multiple identities the same as every other identity.

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#118

By creating many identities that pretend to be someone or something to gain access to the various levels of a system and its resources (depending on the system). A today real-world example would be bots that have been released into the social media world that attempt to influence the “real” users of the systems.

Being an anonymous system there are no real identities only linkages to an identity of a source.

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#119
  1. What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
    Ans: one attacker infiltrates an entire network by creating multiple fake identities to act as adversarial nodes
  2. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?
    Ans: when a network of computers is attacked by inserting fake or malicious nodes.on crypto networks much harder. This is because the cost of the attack makes it impractical.A cost is involved transferring cryptocurrencies - Gas fees on Ethereum.Sybil attack can do on a network is insert easily detected fake data, blocks containing bad information.
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#120

To disrupt a Peer 2 Peer Network by pretending to be another identity and creating more than one Account to increase the influence on the network / community.

To less changing Peers and to less Proof / Consensus.

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#121

  1. What is the general idea of a sybil attack?
    It’s a kind of security threat on an online system where one person tries to take over the network by creating multiple accounts, nodes or computers.

  2. What deficiencies within a system (such as a cryptocurrency network) can allow a sybil attack to occur?
    If an online network lacks consensus algorithms (Proof of Work, PoS, DPoS and so on) then one could potentially exploit Sybil attack by creating multiple identities to gain more influence in the network.

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