Foundations of Blockchain

Eclipse attacks

Up to this point, we've explored possible attacks on the consensus of the blockchain network. But networking attacks are mostly ignored due to the difficulty involved in defeating a decentralized network that works using the peer-to-peer protocol. This doesn't mean that attacks on peer-to-peer networks are impossible. In an eclipse attack, the attacker eclipses the node from the network. The attacker makes sure that the node will not communicate with the blockchain network. The node will believe in a completely different truth than the rest of the network after the node is compromised by the attack. Generally, eclipse attacks are performed on high-profile blockchain nodes such as miners or merchants.

The eclipse attack was ...