Ethereum Protocol Fellowship 8th week update

Self Introduction

I’m a PhD student in Syracuse University in Blockchain security area, and now working on the Ethereum Mempool Attack Detection&Defence. Very excited joining in the fellowship and make some contribution to the Ethereum Portocol.

Process

As I just recovered from Covid-19, I didn’t do much work last week. But this week I'm getting better, so I keep on doing the test of the previous deter attack defense.

How do we test the success of our defense on the net?

Start private node

We start a private node and start an interactive session using Geth console connected to the node we established.

node1="enode://cb294d2aea6a8182ca11a7073a77526a5d80083859ba02b8478707d860b89403539eda1bd72ad20f3c44db01adb180359503a326f0d653bb7d8e748905bfbc3e@127.0.0.1:10001?discport=0"
victim="enode://38391d874c61a044c05456330295109abcb53fd00d5523fca87c4ade178361463683bd9b49db1f24a4251ddf9cfa6d8f16f5c8df7e8d7c0ebd7766a037aeee55@127.0.0.1:10002?discport=0"

GETH1925="/home/yuxuan/Downloads/test-priv-geth/build/bin/geth"
ETH_DATA=./data

# ./stop_ethereum.sh
mkdir -p $ETH_DATA/keystore
cp key_new/* $ETH_DATA/keystore/
rm -rf data/geth/chaindata/ data/geth/lightchaindata/ data/geth/transactions.rlp

# miner threads
NM=1
if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
NM=$1
fi
echo "Starting geth with $NM miner threads"

GETH=$GETH1925
$GETH –datadir=$ETH_DATA init genesis.json
$GETH –datadir=$ETH_DATA –nodiscover –port 10003 –http –http.port 18545 –http.api "eth,net,web3,personal,txpool" –txpool.pricelimit 0 –maxpeers 32 –networkid 20191003 –authrpc.port 8552 –verbosity 5 –allow-insecure-unlock –allow-insecure-unlock console

Trace generate

For the test cases, here are two adequate trace generation cases in detail.

def resetAndinitial():

global original_nonces
global original_future_nonces
global original_nonce2
global nonces
global future_nonces
global nonces2
s_a = 0
e_a = 384
ClearPool(target_URL)
nonces = copy.deepcopy(original_nonces)
future_nonces = copy.deepcopy(original_future_nonces)
nonces2 = copy.deepcopy(original_nonce2)
for i in range(6144):

index = s_a + i%(e_a-s_a)
price=20
send(target_accounts2[index],target_accounts[index], nonces2[index], price,0, key_dict[target_accounts2[index]])
sentList.append([target_accounts2[index],target_accounts[index], nonces2[index], price, 0, key_dict[target_accounts2[index]]])
nonces2[index] +=1

For every test case, we need to reset the txpool, and here is the function we wrote to reset and initialize the txpool:
First, we clear the pool.

ClearPool(target_URL)

Then, we sent 6144 transactions with a price of 20 to fill out the txpool.

send(target_accounts2[index],target_accounts[index], nonces2[index], price,0, key_dict[target_accounts2[index]])

Attack txs

After the resetting, we start to send our attack transaction sequence.

For attack ED1: Discard Future tx when txpool is full.
So we sent a future tx with an index of 392>384+1 with a price of 30 which is higher than the 20 we sent before.

addrIndex = 392
tx_hash = send(target_accounts2[addrIndex],target_accounts[addrIndex], nonces2[addrIndex]+1, 30, 200000000000000, key_dict[target_accounts2[addrIndex]])
print(tx_hash)

For attack ED2: txpool is full, discard this tx because it will evict other valid tx(s) and it will cause an overdraft.
So we sent 3 txs from one sender whose addrIndex is 390 and then set the value of these txs 200000000000000,200000000000000,900000000000000, which will cause the sum of the value to exceed the balance of the account balance = 1000000000000000 which is called overdraft.

1st tx:

addrIndex = 390
tx_hash = send(target_accounts2[addrIndex],target_accounts[addrIndex], nonces2[addrIndex], 10,200000000000000, key_dict[target_accounts2[addrIndex]])
nonces2[addrIndex] +=1
print(tx_hash)

2nd tx:

tx_hash1= send(target_accounts2[addrIndex],target_accounts[addrIndex], nonces2[addrIndex], 20,200000000000000, key_dict[target_accounts2[addrIndex]])
print(tx_hash1)

3rd tx:

nonces2[addrIndex] -= 1
tx_hash2= send(target_accounts2[addrIndex],target_accounts[addrIndex], nonces2[addrIndex], 40,900000000000000, key_dict[target_accounts2[addrIndex]])
print(tx_hash2)

After we sent all the txs before, we find that the txpool didn't include the trading against the rules, so that means we have a successful attack defense.