{"id":6220,"date":"2022-08-07T02:44:46","date_gmt":"2022-08-07T02:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/?p=6220"},"modified":"2022-08-07T02:44:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-07T02:44:47","slug":"researchers-say-they-discovered-consensus-level-attack-on-ethereum-miners-cheating-the-system-to-earn-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/?p=6220","title":{"rendered":"Researchers say they discovered consensus level attack on Ethereum \u2014 miners cheating the system to earn more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\r\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"totafreearti-20\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"search\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\r\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\r\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = \"crypto\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_category = \"All\";\r\namzn_assoc_search_bar = \"false\";\r\namzn_assoc_title = \"\";\r\namzn_assoc_rows =\"1\";\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>A research paper published by The Hebrew University in Israel reports having discovered the \u201cfirst evidence of a consensus-level attack on a major cryptocurrency.\u201d The paper is currently awaiting peer review but utilizes publicly available on-chain data and Ethereum\u2019s open source codebase to affirm its conclusions.<\/p>\n<p>At its core, the paper highlights an issue where miners can change the timestamp related to a mined block to avoid increased difficulty on the network. On-chain data appears to support the claim as Aviv Yaish, one of the paper\u2019s authors, highlighted F2Pool\u2019s block timestamps being artificially altered to improve rewards.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">(9\/12) Whenever F2Pool&#8217;s block timestamps reach the point where mining difficulty is supposed to decrease, they artificially set them to be one second earlier. F2Pool has been executing this attack over the past two years, and the evidence has been hiding in plain sight! \u2026 pic.twitter.com\/mDEG2UqXZh<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Aviv Yaish (@yaish_aviv) August 5, 2022<\/p>\n<h2>Uncle Maker<\/h2>\n<p>Ethereum is maintained through a proof-of-work consensus mechanism, which will be moved to proof-of-stake this September. However, to this point, the network appears to be susceptible to the attack identified in by The Hebrew University.<\/p>\n<p>The consensus-level attack is referred to as an Uncle Maker attack within the paper in reference to the \u201cuncle\u201d blocks used in the exploit. Blocks within the Ethereum blockchain act as a set of records that are checked, distributed, and verified across the entire network. Uncle blocks are valid blocks that have been removed from the main chain but still receive rewards.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe attack allows an attacker to replace competitors\u2019 main-chain blocks after the fact with a block of its own, thus causing the replaced block\u2019s miner to lose all transactions fees for the transactions contained within the block, which will be demoted from the main-chain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Miners can set a block\u2019s timestamp within \u201ca certain reasonable bound,\u201d typically within a few seconds. One mining pool that was singled out in the research was F2Pool, which \u201cin the past two years, F2Pool didn\u2019t have even a single block with a timestamp\u201d that matched the expected outcome. F2Pool is one of the largest Ethereum pools operating with a hashrate of 129 TH\/s and generating roughly 1.5K ETH in daily rewards.<\/p>\n<p>The paper also highlighted that F2Pool\u2019s \u201cfounder has made a relatively well publicized condemnation of competing mining pools, blaming them for attacking his own mining pool\u201d while, in reality, \u201cF2Pool are attacking other mining pools.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The monetary impact of the attack has not yet been officially identified, but CryptoSlate reached out Yaish who told us,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor each successful instance of the attack, F2Pool earned 14% more from block rewards, and in addition earned all the transaction fees contained within.<\/p>\n<p>We are currently attempting to give concrete estimations for both of your questions using real-world data, which will be published immediately when we have them!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Hebrew University has \u201cconcrete fixes for Ethereum\u2019s protocol\u201d and created a patch for consideration. Yaish stated in a blog post that the information was \u201cresponsibly disclosed to the Ethereum Foundation\u201d before publication.<\/p>\n<h2>Get an Edge on the Crypto Market \ud83d\udc47<\/h2>\n<p>Become a member of CryptoSlate Edge and access our exclusive Discord community, more exclusive content and analysis.<\/p>\n<p>  <strong>On-chain analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>  <strong>Price snapshots<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>  <strong>More context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> Join now for $19\/month Explore all benefits<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\r\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"totafreearti-20\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"search\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\r\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\r\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = \"bitcoin\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_category = \"All\";\r\namzn_assoc_search_bar = \"false\";\r\namzn_assoc_title = \"\";\r\namzn_assoc_rows =\"1\";\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/cryptoslate.com\/researchers-say-they-discovered-consensus-level-attack-on-ethereum-miners-cheating-the-system-to-earn-more\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A research paper published by The Hebrew University in Israel reports having discovered the \u201cfirst evidence of a consensus-level attack on a major cryptocurrency.\u201d The paper is currently awaiting peer review but utilizes publicly available on-chain data and Ethereum\u2019s open source codebase to affirm its conclusions. At its core, the paper highlights an issue where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethereum-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6222,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220\/revisions\/6222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}