Ethereum Eclipse Attacks
Karl Wüst, Arthur Gervais · Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) · 2016
In this technical report, we present three vulnerabilities affecting the Ethereum blockchain network and client.First, we outline an eclipse attack that allows an adversary to partition the peer-to-peer network without monopolizing the connections of the victim.This is attack is possible by exploiting the block propagation design of Ethereum.Second, we present an exploit to force a node to accept a longer chain with lower total difficulty than the main chain.Finally, we outline a bug in Ethereum's difficulty calculation.We provide countermeasure proposals for each reported vulnerability.