The goal of the attacker is to conceal the user’s view of the P2P network, prepare for more complex attacks or cause total damage. The Eclipse attack is similar to the Sybil attack, but their ultimate goal is different. They are similar in the sense that a certain network is flooded with false peers. However, the difference is that in an eclipse attack, a single node is attacked. In the witch attack, the entire network is under attack. In addition, attackers can use Sybil attacks to build many apparently independent overlay nodes to launch eclipse attacks. Attackers may use the coverage maintenance mechanism to launch eclipse attacks; therefore, the protective measures against Sybil attacks cannot prevent eclipse attacks. The Eclipse attack was fully discussed in a 2015 paper entitled “Eclipse Attacks on Bitcoin Peer-to-Peer Networks” written by researchers from Boston University and Hebrew University. In the above paper, the authors discussed their discovery of the eclipse attack and possible countermeasures. In an eclipse attack, the attacker attempts to redirect the inbound and outbound connections of the target network participant from the legitimate node to the attacker’s node. By doing this, the target is isolated from the actual network. Since the target is disconnected from the blockchain ledger, orphaned nodes can be manipulated by attackers. A solar eclipse attack may cause block mining interruption and illegal transaction confirmation. The difficulty of executing a blockchain attack depends on the underlying structure of the target blockchain network.
Eclipse attack in blockchain
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