What is an Eclipse Attack?

Introduction

Cryptocurrency and digital coins are regarded as the future of banking. This is not merely a statement but truth in itself because many people around the whole globe have adopted this technique and technology by investing in it. The investment is in the form of money mainly in fiat from their bank account but the progress and returns are in digital form. The most used gadget around the world is a smartphone and this smartphone has added to the convenience of the investors who work on their mobile phones to get what they want, even digital coins and currency. If you plan to have an easy and accessible bitcoin trading, sign up and use a platform like bitcoin champion.

Moreover, cryptocurrency is regarded as a form of easy money and this ease adds to the participation of investors from around the globe. It works on the principle of blockchain and mining. People who are involved in mining are called crypto miners and the ones who are involved in blockchain are mainly the programmers and the algorithm masters. 

Eclipse attack

Crypto being a powerful source of easy money has many users around the globe but at the same time, there are such persons online who prey on the hard work of others. Those people have the sole purpose of using the sources of others to benefit themselves. So, the platform is prone to web attacks and scammers follow the path of an ill omen to get it done. Several attacks happen on the blockchain during the day. Among many attacks, the eclipse attack is also one of the types that work on a P2P network. Where the peer-to-peer attack has involved the involvement of nodes by default. Thus, this attack mainly affects nodes and only on those nodes that have the facility of incoming traffic. Those nodes which do not allow incoming traffic are free from this attack and work fine till the traffic resumes on them as well. The concept behind an eclipse attack is that a copy of a legit node is made and the traffic is diverted to the scammed node thereby making the user think that he is processing through the right route but that is far from reality. In short, an eclipse attack is getting ownership of such a node that is not meant for that transaction.

Results of an eclipse attack

The results of an eclipse attack are serious and should be avoided as far as possible. Majorly two consequences of an eclipse attack are there which are double spending and power disruption for the miner.

Double spending

As the word indicates double spending means spending something more than once majorly twice. It is regarded to be a major result of an eclipse attack and causes loss to the user and the other party that was supposed to receive the amount. When one party sends some assets to another party, the sender receives a transaction report but before that happens the same party gets a request to repeat the transaction by heading that the previous transaction was unsuccessful causing the user to spend twice.

Power disruption

Blockchain has nodes and other information in the form of blocks. The miners that mine cryptocurrency when attacked by an eclipse attack forbid them to show their mined block. The attacker can easily block the miner and his power thereby increasing his ability to mine ore. This attack is bad both for the miner and for the authenticity of the blockchain.

Prevention of eclipse attack

The problem can be solved by increasing node connections, setting to the random selection of nodes, and getting yourself well equipped with knowledge and experience. Only then this attack can be prevented and solved.