Abstract
Nowadays, 1375 different cryptocurrencies exist, and their market value totals up to $444.8 billion, at the time of writing. The interest revolving around cryptocurrencies is constantly growing, and this hype caused an increase of criminal attacks on various cryptocurrencies. In this paper, we cover the main aspects that concern cryptocurrencies vulnerabilities and related security breaches. Then, we propose possible solutions to prevent them, or to decrease the attackers’ profit margins by increasing the costs they have to face, in order to strike some of these attacks. Alongside, we briefly describe a few attacks that have occurred in the past.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
10 things you need to know about ripple. https://www.coindesk.com/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-ripple/
\$55 million in digital currency stolen from investment fund. https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/55-million-in-digital-currency-stolen-from-investment-fund-a-9214
Best Ethereum wallets 2017: hardware vs software vs paper. https://blockonomi.com/best-ethereum-wallets/
Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/
Bitcoin hack highlights cryptocurrency challenges. https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/bitcoin-hack-highlights-cryptocurrency-challenges-a-9305
Bitcoin, litecoin exchange platform under DDoS attack, security inadequate. https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-litecoin-exchange-platform-under-ddos-attack-security-inadequate
Cryptocurrency market capitalizations. https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/
Ethereum based proof-of-individuality prevents sybil attacks. https://decentralize.today/ethereum-based-proof-of-individuality-prevents-sybil-attacks-9757864bbf61
Hacker uses parity wallet vulnerability to steal \$30 million worth of Ethereum. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hacker-uses-parity-wallet-vulnerability-to-steal-30-million-worth-of-ethereum/
Introducing ripple. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/introducing-ripple/
New RETADUP variants hit south America, turn to cryptocurrency mining. https://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/new-retadup-variants-hit-south-america-turn-cryptocurrency-mining/
Nicehash hacked at peak BTC prices, loses \$64 million’s worth of Bitcoin. https://cryptovest.com/news/nicehash-hacked-at-peak-btc-prices-loses-64-millions-worth-of-bitcoin/
The ongoing Bitcoin malleability attack. https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-ongoing-bitcoin-malleability-attack
Proof of identity on Ethereum (or the “KYC problem”). https://blog.oraclize.it/proof-of-identity-on-ethereum-or-the-kyc-problem-f4a9ee40af21
Re: Anonymity. Bitcoin forum. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=241.msg2071#msg2071
Re: Maximum block size? - Ethereum community forum. https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1757/maximum-block-size
Re: What is the incentive to collect transactions. Bitcoin forum thread. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=165.msg1595#msg1595. Accessed 26 Feb 2018
Timejacking & Bitcoin. http://culubas.blogspot.dk/
Transaction fee historical chart. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth-bch-ltc-dash-xmr-vtc-aur.html
Andrychowicz M, Dziembowski S, Malinowski D, Mazurek Ł (2015) On the malleability of Bitcoin transactions. In: Brenner M, Christin N, Johnson B, Rohloff K (eds) Financial cryptographyand data security. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 1–18
Bucko J, Palova D, Vejacka M (2015) Security and trust in cryptocurrencies
Conti M, Kumar ES, Lal C, Ruj, S (June 2017) A survey on security and privacy issues of Bitcoin. ArXiv e-prints
McGinn D, Birch D, Akroyd D, Molina-Solana M, Guo Y, Knottenbelt WJ (2016) Visualizing dynamic Bitcoin transaction patterns. Big Data 4(2):109–119. https://doi.org/10.1089/big.2015.0056, pMID: 27441715
Decker C, Wattenhofer R (2014) Bitcoin transaction malleability and MtGox. In: Kutyłowski M, Vaidya J (eds) Computer security - ESORICS 2014. Springer, Cham, pp 313–326
Eyal I, Sirer EG (2014) Majority is not enough: Bitcoin mining is vulnerable. In: Christin N, Safavi-Naini R (eds) Financial cryptography and data security. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 436–454
Feder A, Gandal N, Hamrick JT, Moore T (2017) The impact of DDoS and other security shocks on Bitcoin currency exchanges: evidence from mt. Gox. J Cybersecur 3(2):137–144. https://doi.org/10.1093/cybsec/tyx012
Gao Y, Nobuhara H (2017) A proof of stake sharding protocol for scalable blockchains. In: Proceedings of the 14th APAN research workshop 2017
Johnson B, Laszka A, Grossklags J, Vasek M, Moore T (2014) Game-theoretic analysis of DDoS attacks against Bitcoin mining pools. In: Böhme R, Brenner M, Moore T, Smith M (eds) Financial cryptography and data security. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 72–86
Kaushal R (2016) Bitcoin: vulnerabilities and attacks. Imperial J Interdiscip Res 2(7) (2016). http://www.imperialjournals.com/index.php/IJIR/article/view/1238
Latif S, Mohd M, Mohd Amin M, Mohamad A (2017) Testing the weak form of efficient market in cryptocurrency. J Eng Appl Sci 12(9):2285–2288
Vasek M, Thornton M, Moore T (2014) Empirical analysis of denial-of-service attacks in the Bitcoin ecosystem. In: Böhme R, Brenner M, Moore T, Smith M (eds) Financial cryptographyand data security. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 57–71
Vyas CA, Lunagaria M (May 2014) Article: Security concerns and issues for Bitcoin. In: IJCA proceedings on national conference cum workshop on bioinformatics and computational biology NCWBCB, no 2, pp 10–12. Full text available
Xu X, Pautasso C, Zhu L, Gramoli V, Ponomarev A, Tran AB, Chen S (April 2016) The blockchain as a software connector. In: 2016 13th working IEEE/IFIP conference on software architecture (WICSA), pp 182–191. https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2016.21
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sigurdsson, G., Giaretta, A., Dragoni, N. (2020). Vulnerabilities and Security Breaches in Cryptocurrencies. In: Ciancarini, P., Mazzara, M., Messina, A., Sillitti, A., Succi, G. (eds) Proceedings of 6th International Conference in Software Engineering for Defence Applications. SEDA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 925. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14687-0_26
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14687-0_26
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14686-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14687-0
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)