3.3.1 DoS/DDoS/BDoS Attacks

DoS/DDoS/BDoS Attacks

Denial of Service (DoS):

• Mechanism: A DoS attack involves overwhelming a target (usually a server or node in the network) with a flood of traffic, making it unable to respond to legitimate requests. In the context of blockchain, this could mean flooding a blockchain node or service with requests to slow it down or crash it.

• Impact: A successful DoS attack can cause disruption in the normal functioning of the blockchain, delaying transaction verification and causing network delays.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS):

• Mechanism: A more advanced version of DoS, a DDoS attack involves multiple distributed sources (often a botnet of compromised devices) that collectively target the victim.

• Impact: DDoS attacks can severely damage network performance, making nodes or the blockchain service unreachable to legitimate users, causing service outages or slowdowns.

Blockchain Denial of Service (BDoS):

• Mechanism: This type of attack targets blockchain networks specifically by exploiting their consensus mechanisms or other protocols that rely on distributed nodes.

• Impact: BDoS attacks could cause delays in transaction validation, block confirmation, or consensus propagation. Attackers could flood the network with invalid transactions or malicious requests that overwhelm the network’s ability to process legitimate data, effectively bringing the system to a halt.

Prevention: Solutions include rate limiting, firewall protections, anti-DDoS mechanisms, and load balancing across multiple servers.