Malicious Conspiracy on Permissioned Blockchain to Mount Denial-of-endorsement Attacks
Siyuan Zheng, Changqing Yin, Bin Lin Wu · 2021
With the application of blockchains in cryptocurrencies, Internet-of-things and smart contracts etc., many attacks on blockchains and related vulnerabilities have been found. In this paper, we propose a conspiracy scheme on permissioned blockchain, Hyperledger Fabric, through the subliminal channel in the digital signature of Gossip message. For the first time, we propose an attack, called denial-of- endorsement (DoE) attack, on the channel where malicious peer nodes deliberately refuse to endorse the transaction proposals from client applications, trying to break down the normal business workflow. Based on our proposed conspiracy scheme, we design a DoE attack conspiracy protocol, which enables malicious peer nodes to secretly conspire to mount a DoE attack on the channel. We also make some mitigation analysis, aiming at helping Hyperledger Fabric users avoid such DoE attacks and eliminate conspiracy.