Topic: Beware of Zombie and Griefing Attacks on LN (Read 57 times)

Beware of New Zombie and Griefing Attacks on Bitcoin Lightening Network

Here's another update on security measures needed by the engagers of the lightening network users as it is believed that hackers could device more means that is evidently malicious enough to penetrate attack on node operators by holding the channels thereby pausing it in a term often referred to as "zombie attack" here transactions were unconfirmed on the nodes attached to the lightening channels and this makes the coins inaccessible, this attack ensure a discontinuous operations, it is also believed that increasing a transaction fee rate could be one of the reasons to scale through the blockchain layer 2 while honest node need to wrap up the lightening network and thereby closing the channel, but zombie attack wouldn't let go.

Also, another attack related to this is the "griefing attack" which is another means whereby the network of blockchain get busy with unnecessary unsolicited channels and irrelevant transactions in a huge number of bugs thereby causing interruption, these two attacks zombi and griefing were targeted at hiking the transaction fees and make nodes losses its user rewards from engaging with the use of the LN, they also something uses the effect of double spending in other to chance there way through, they believed it's one of the smartest means to override the queue on blocks to get their transaction confirmed first thereby creating double spending, but here the justice transaction seek a confirmation from honest nodes, which eventually reveal their attempt for an attack.

That does not end there but instead, the hacker engage further by going after honest node, increasing their transaction fees to counter the judgement from justice transaction in other to get their transaction confirmed first by the miner except the honest node was able to successfully presents a higher fee than the hacker to allow it justice transaction get confirmed first by the miner.

How to avoid high risk of the Lightening Network

Set a well configured watchtowers for your lightening network daemons, this ensures a proper appropriation of the user's fund fully restored back in other to avoid loos of assets due to attack whenever there's compromise, only the transaction levied fee here got unrefunded.

Reference:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/bitcoindynamic.com/news/researchers-discover-security-flaws-in-bitcoins-lightning-network/%3famp
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/docs/watchtower.md
https://github.com/KadenZipfel/smart-contract-attack-vectors/blob/master/attacks/insufficient-gas-griefing.md
https://protos.com/researchers-discover-critical-bitcoin-lightning-network-vulnerability/