Related papers: Data mining for detecting Bitcoin Ponzi schemes
Many of the recent works on the profitability of rogue mining strategies hinge on a parameter called $\gamma$ that measures the proportion of the honest network attracted by the attacker to mine on top of his fork. These works, see…
Privacy-seeking cryptocurrency users rely on anonymization techniques like CoinJoin and ring transactions. By using such technologies benign users potentially provide anonymity to bad actors. We propose overlay protocols to resolve the…
Cryptographic algorithms have been used not only to create robust ciphertexts but also to generate cryptograms that, contrary to the classic goal of cryptography, are meant to be broken. These cryptograms, generally called puzzles, require…
The decentralization, redundancy, and pseudo-anonymity features have made permission-less public blockchain platforms attractive for adoption as technology platforms for cryptocurrencies. However, such adoption has enabled cybercriminals to…
Mining attacks allow adversaries to obtain a disproportionate share of the mining reward by deviating from the honest mining strategy in the Bitcoin system. Among them, the most well-known are selfish mining (SM), block withholding (BWH),…
Digital currencies represent a new method for exchange and investment that differs strongly from any other fiat money seen throughout history. A digital currency makes it possible to perform all financial transactions without the…
Mining is a central operation of all proof-of-work (PoW) based cryptocurrencies. The vast majority of miners today participate in "mining pools" instead of "solo mining" in order to lower risk and achieve a more steady income. However, this…
Bitcoin provides freshness properties by forming a blockchain where each block is associated with its timestamp and the previous block. Due to these properties, the Bitcoin protocol is being used as a decentralized, trusted, and secure…
Over the past three years, especially following WannaCry malware, ransomware has become one of the biggest concerns for private businesses, state, and local government agencies. According to Homeland Security statistics, 1.5 million…
This research delves into the intricacies of Bitcoin, a decentralized peer-to-peer network, and its associated blockchain, which records all transactions since its inception. While this ensures integrity and transparency, the transparent…
Bitcoin is the first and undoubtedly most successful cryptocurrecny to date with a market capitalization of more than 100 billion dollars. Today, Bitcoin has more than 100,000 supporting merchants and more than 3 million active users.…
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptographic currency system. Since its introduction in 2008, Bitcoin has gained noticeable popularity, mostly due to its following properties: (1) the transaction fees are very low, and (2) it is not controlled…
For different factors/reasons, ranging from inherent characteristics and features providing decentralization, enhanced privacy, ease of transactions, etc., to implied external hardships in enforcing regulations, contradictions in data…
Criminals have become increasingly experienced in using cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, for money laundering. The use of cryptocurrencies can hide criminal identities and transfer hundreds of millions of dollars of dirty funds through…
Applications of blockchain technologies got a lot of attention in recent years. They exceed beyond exchanging value and being a substitute for fiat money and traditional banking system. Nevertheless, being able to exchange value on a…
The bitcoin peer-to-peer network has drawn significant attention from researchers, but so far has mostly focused on publicly visible portions of the network, i.e., publicly reachable peers. This mostly ignores the hidden parts of the…
Although Bitcoin in its original whitepaper stated that it offers anonymous transactions, de-anonymization techniques have found otherwise. Therefore, alternative cryptocurrencies, like Dash, Monero, and Zcash, were developed to provide…
Clients of permissionless blockchain systems, like Bitcoin, rely on an underlying peer-to-peer network to send and receive transactions. It is critical that a client is connected to at least one honest peer, as otherwise the client can be…
Money laundering is a global phenomenon with wide-reaching social and economic consequences. Cryptocurrencies are particularly susceptible due to the lack of control by authorities and their anonymity. Thus, it is important to develop new…
The digital currency Bitcoin has had remarkable growth since it was first proposed in 2008. Its distributed nature allows currency transactions without a central authority by using cryptographic methods and a data structure called the…