Bribe & Fork: Cheap Bribing Attacks via Forking Threat

In this work, we reexamine the vulnerability of Payment Channel Networks (PCNs) to bribing attacks, where an adversary incentivizes blockchain miners to deliberately ignore a specific transaction to undermine the punishment mechanism of PCNs. While previous studies have posited a prohibitive cost for such attacks, we show that this cost may be dramatically reduced (to approximately \$125), thereby increasing the likelihood of these attacks. To this end, we introduce Bribe & Fork, a modified bribing attack that leverages the threat …

adversary attacks blockchain bribe channel cost cs.cr fork may mechanism miners networks payment studies threat transaction vulnerability work