The paper presents a formal analysis of the security of the Lightning Network payment protocol using model checking. The authors build a detailed formal model of the single-hop payment protocol based on the Basis of Lightning Technology (BOLTs) specification. They define five security-critical properties that capture the correct intermediate operation of the protocol, ensuring that the outcome is always certain to both channel peers.
The authors find that two of the five properties can be violated, leading to the rediscovery of a known congestion attack and the discovery of a novel Payout Race attack. The Payout Race attack can result in an ambiguous state where either party can claim the funds, possibly against the expectations of the other peer.
The authors reproduce the Payout Race attack in a local testbed environment using the lnd Lightning Network client, which follows the BOLT specifications. They discuss the implications of the attack and the limitations of mitigation techniques due to the timing of messages in distributed systems.
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by Ben Weintrau... a las arxiv.org 05-06-2024
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.02147.pdfConsultas más profundas