Related papers: On legitimate mining of cryptocurrency in the brow…
In this paper we revisit the mining strategies in proof of work based cryptocurrencies and propose two strategies, we call smart and smarter mining, that in many cases strictly dominate honest mining. In contrast to other known attacks,…
Browsing privacy solutions face an uphill battle to deployment. Many operate counter to the economic objectives of popular online services (e.g., by completely blocking ads) and do not provide enough incentive for users who may be subject…
Bitcoin is a "crypto currency", a decentralized electronic payment scheme based on cryptography which has recently gained excessive popularity. Scientific research on bitcoin is less abundant. A paper at Financial Cryptography 2012…
Many internet ventures rely on advertising for their revenue. However, users feel discontent by the presence of ads on the websites they visit, as the data-size of ads is often comparable to that of the actual content. This has an impact…
The intrusiveness and the increasing invasiveness of online advertising have, in the last few years, raised serious concerns regarding user privacy and Web usability. As a reaction to these concerns, we have witnessed the emergence of a…
Advertising becomes one of the most popular ways of monetizing an online transaction platform. Usually, sponsored advertisements are posted on the most attractive positions to enhance the number of clicks. However, multiple e-commerce…
Proof of work cryptocurrencies began with the promise of a more egalitarian future with a decentralized monetary system with no powerful entities in charge. While this vision is far from realized, these cryptocurrencies are still touted to…
Bitcoin, a decentralized cryptocurrency, has attracted a lot of attention from academia, financial service industry and enthusiasts. The trade-off between transaction confirmation throughput and centralization of hash power do not allow…
Blockchain systems often employ proof-of-work consensus protocols to validate and add transactions into hashchains. These protocols stimulate competition among miners in solving cryptopuzzles (e.g. SHA-256 hash computation in Bitcoin) in…
Demand flexibility plays a pivotal role in modern power systems with high penetration of variable energy resources. In recent years, one of the fastest-growing flexible energy demands has been proof-of-work-based cryptocurrency mining…
Selfish mining is a well known vulnerability in blockchains exploited by miners to steal block rewards. In this paper, we explore a new form of selfish mining attack that guarantees high rewards with low cost. We show the feasibility of…
Free content and services on the Web are often supported by ads. However, with the proliferation of intrusive and privacy-invasive ads, a significant proportion of users have started to use ad blockers. As existing ad blockers are radical…
Cryptojacking is the exploitation of victims' computer resources to mine for cryptocurrency using malicious scripts. It has become popular after 2017 when attackers started to exploit legal mining scripts, especially Coinhive scripts.…
We show how third-party web trackers can deanonymize users of cryptocurrencies. We present two distinct but complementary attacks. On most shopping websites, third party trackers receive information about user purchases for purposes of…
Bitcoin is a "crypto currency", a decentralized electronic payment scheme based on cryptography. Bitcoin economy grows at an incredibly fast rate and is now worth some 10 billions of dollars. Bitcoin mining is an activity which consists of…
Proof-of-work computation used in cryptocurrencies has witnessed significant growth in the U.S. and many other regions around the world. One of the most significant bottlenecks for the scalable deployment of such computation is its energy…
Privacy regulations have led to many websites showing cookie banners to their users. Usually, cookie banners present the user with the option to "accept" or "reject" cookies. Recently, a new form of paywall-like cookie banner has taken hold…
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions in a public log called the blockchain. Its security rests critically on the distributed protocol that maintains the blockchain, run by participants called miners. Conventional wisdom…
This paper conducts a comprehensive examination of the infrastructure supporting cryptojacking operations. The analysis elucidates the methodologies, frameworks, and technologies malicious entities employ to misuse computational resources…
Monetizing websites and web apps through online advertising is widespread in the web ecosystem. The online advertising ecosystem nowadays forces publishers to integrate ads from these third-party domains. On the one hand, this raises…