Denial of Service Resistance for Bitcoin Mixing Method TumbleBit

• Main Authors: Kuan, Hsuan-Hao, 管軒晧
• Other Authors: Chen, Rong-Jaye
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/q8s3bx

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 多媒體工程研究所 === 105 === Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and payment method, proposed in 2009 by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. It offers secure and fast payments across the globe while requiring little to no setup. The system is maintained by volunteers, through a public ledger called the blockchain. The Bitcoin system was first perceived to be an anonymous system, thanks to the use of pseudonyms in the blockchain. However, over the years research and surveillance services suggest otherwise. To protect user privacy, several solutions have been proposed, among which Bitcoin mixing counters blockchain surveillance and remains compatible with the current Bitcoin system. Mixing methods, however, suffer from a problem of trust: the service provider is trusted not to steal the users’ funds or breach anonymity. TumbleBit, a recent work that incorporates other existing methods, does not suffer from the problem of trust. However, TumbleBit is vulnerable to large scale Denial-of-Service attacks. In this work, we make such attacks more difficult to accomplish. Attackers are required to escrow more funds than the service in order to paralyze it.