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arXiv · 2407.03543

Asymmetric Mempool DoS Security: Formal Definitions and Provable Secure Designs

Wanning Ding·Yibo Wang·Yuzhe Tang
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Abstract

The mempool plays a crucial role in blockchain systems as a buffer zone for pending transactions before they are executed and included in a block. However, existing works primarily focus on mitigating defenses against already identified real-world attacks. This paper introduces secure blockchain-mempool designs capable of defending against any form of asymmetric eviction DoS attacks. We establish formal security definitions for mempools under the eviction-based attack vector. Our proposed secure transaction admission algorithm, named \textsc{saferAd-CP}, ensures eviction-security by providing a provable lower bound on the cost of executing eviction DoS attacks. Through evaluation with real transaction trace replays, \textsc{saferAd-CP} demonstrates negligible latency and significantly high lower bounds against any eviction attack, highlighting its effectiveness and robustness in securing blockchain mempools.

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Wanning Ding, Yibo Wang, Yuzhe Tang. 2024-07-03. Asymmetric Mempool DoS Security: Formal Definitions and Provable Secure Designs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.03543

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