SDoS: Selfish Mining-Based Denial-of-Service Attack
Qiuhua Wang, Tianyu Xia, Dong Wang, Yizhi Ren, Gongxun Miao, Kim‐Kwang Raymond Choo
Abstract
In this paper, we focus on mining attacks targeting the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism in blockchain-based systems. Specifically, we model mining as a game and propose a mining attack – the Selfish mining-based denial of service (SDoS) attack. By studying the choices (mining or stopping) of honest miners under the attack and the adversary’s revenue, we demonstrate that selfish mining is incentive-compatible with game-level denial of service attack, and that SDoS can be more threatening than existing mining attacks. Even under the worst assumption, the adversary only needs to master more than 19.6% of the total mining power to increase the revenue, and can launch a 51% attack with much less than 50%. In addition, we show that honest miners may make decisions based on the overall or current utility, and choosing the current utility is more beneficial to the adversary.