Bribe & Fork: Cheap Bribing Attacks via Forking Threat
<|reference_start|>Bribe & Fork: Cheap Bribing Attacks via Forking Threat: In this work, we reexamine the vulnerability of Payment Channel Networks (PCNs) to bribing attacks, where an adversary incentivizes blockchain miners to deliberately ignore a specific transaction to undermine the punishment mechanism of PCNs. While previous studies have posited a prohibitive cost for such attacks, we show that this cost may be dramatically reduced (to approximately \$125), thereby increasing the likelihood of these attacks. To this end, we introduce Bribe & Fork, a modified bribing attack that leverages the threat of a so-called feather fork which we analyze with a novel formal model for the mining game with forking. We empirically analyze historical data of some real-world blockchain implementations to evaluate the scale of this cost reduction. Our findings shed more light on the potential vulnerability of PCNs and highlight the need for robust solutions.<|reference_end|>
@article{avarikioti2024bribe,
    title={Bribe & Fork: Cheap Bribing Attacks via Forking Threat},
    author={Zeta Avarikioti, Pawe{l} Kk{e}dzior, Tomasz Lizurej, Tomasz Michalak},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.01363},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2402.01363},
    primaryClass={cs.CR}
}