Researchers from universities in Norway and Luxembourg have discovered the possibility of an attack on the Lightning Network. It can reveal the balances of the nodes through which the transaction goes.
According to the report, four researchers and Lightning Network (LN) developer Ren Pickhardt (Ren Pickhardt) was able to use the transfer of transactions through intermediate nodes in order to "probe" the network channels and disclose the number of bitcoins lying on balance sheets.
LN users can send transactions not only directly but also through intermediaries. Researchers used multiple transactions to determine the nodes' balances, and the transactions themselves were rejected due to lack of funds in the purse, or deliberately incorrect transaction hash.
Researchers also suggested several possible ways to address this vulnerability, but stressed that each would require a trade-off between confidentiality and efficiency.
Lightning Network is a Layer 2 solution for scaling the Bitcoin network. Currently, there are more than 11,000 nodes and 36,000 payment channels on the network, with about 900 BTC blocked.
Last October, researchers Saar Tochner, Aviv Zohar and Stefan Schmid discovered a DoS attack that could slow down payments on the Lightning Network.
Comments
Post a Comment