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Characterizing Erasable Accounts in Ethereum

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Information Security (ISC 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 12472))

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Abstract

Being the most popular permissionless blockchain that supports smart contracts, Ethereum allows any user to create accounts on it. However, not all accounts matter. For example, the accounts due to attacks can be removed. In this paper, we conduct the first investigation on erasable accounts that can be removed to save system resources and even users’ money (i.e., ETH or gas). In particular, we propose and develop a novel tool named Glaser, which analyzes the State DataBase of Ethereum to discover five kinds of erasable accounts. The experimental results show that Glaser can accurately reveal 508,482 erasable accounts and these accounts lead to users wasting more than 106 million dollars. Glaser can help stop further economic loss caused by these detected accounts. Moreover, Glaser characterizes the attacks/behaviors related to detected erasable accounts through graph analysis.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Xiaoqi Li & Xiapu Luo

  2. Center for Cybersecurity, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China

    Ting Chen

  3. Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Jiangshan Yu

Authors
  1. Xiaoqi Li
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  2. Ting Chen
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  3. Xiapu Luo
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  4. Jiangshan Yu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiapu Luo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Willy Susilo

  2. Singapore Management University, Singapore, Singapore

    Robert H. Deng

  3. Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Fuchun Guo

  4. Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Yannan Li

  5. Informatics, Petra Christian University, Surabaya, Indonesia

    Rolly Intan

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Li, X., Chen, T., Luo, X., Yu, J. (2020). Characterizing Erasable Accounts in Ethereum. In: Susilo, W., Deng, R.H., Guo, F., Li, Y., Intan, R. (eds) Information Security. ISC 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12472. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62974-8_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62974-8_20

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-62973-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-62974-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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