Secure Access Control for DAG-Based Distributed Ledgers

Abstract

Access control is a fundamental component of the design of distributed ledgers, influencing many aspects of their functionality, such as fairness, efficiency, traditional notions of network security, and adversarial attacks such as Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. <xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">¹</xref> In this work, we consider the security of a recently proposed access control protocol for directed acyclic graph-based distributed ledgers. We present a number of attack scenarios and potential vulnerabilities of the protocol and introduce a number of additional features which enhance its resilience. Specifically, a blacklisting algorithm, which is based on a reputation-weighted threshold, is introduced to handle both spamming and multirate malicious attackers. A solidification request component is also introduced to ensure the fairness and consistency of the network in the presence of attacks. Finally, a timestamp component is also introduced to maintain the consistency of the network in the presence of multirate attackers. Simulations to illustrate the efficacy and robustness of the revised protocol are also presented.