State Bloat Attack And It's Operating Techniques On The Blockchain Network

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INTRODUCTION

The blockchain technology is one of the innovative technological advancement, it is a high and very robust security based mechanism, it is decentralized in nature, it is a digital ledger that records transactions across many and multiple computers systems and all its record are made transparent and is immutable or immune to manipulation.

Basically, the blockchain technology has features and security protocols that are very advanced which allows it to operate in the way it does, which also enables it provide its users a secure and decentralized network that manages data and records however, the blockchain has had the robustness of its security protocols and mechanisms tested and unfortunately it is not perfect and attackers now targets this imperfections to comprmise the blockchain network.

Therefore the State bloat attack is one of those threats and attacks that are facilitated by attacker which targets and exploits the imperfections, efficiency and operability of blockchain networks so as to compromise the security of the blockchain network, in this post I will be explaining and discussing some of the mode of operation of the state bloat attack, also highlighting the implications and effects of their operations on the blockchain network.

EXCESSIVE CREATION OF SMART CONTRACTS

Creating more smart contract than the blockchain network efficiently requires so much that it becomes too much and excessive that the computational resources required to operate, store and manage them effectively and efficiently are impossible and instead of being an advantage or beneficial to the network they are rather disadvantageous.

This basically, is one of the mode of operation of the state bloat attack, attackers exploit and take advantage of the drastic effects that creating excessive smart contracts will have on the operation and overall performance of the blockchain network, seeing as the smart contracts will overload storage of the blockchain network hence diminishing it's overall efficiency and performance.

Additionally, the excessive computational burden and stress which this attack imposes on the blockchain network can lead to other drastic repercussions like slow down the network and causing delays, increase in transaction processing fees and longer or increased transaction confirmation times.

TRANSACTION SPAMMING

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Likewise, spamming and overloading the blockchain network with transactions is another significant mode of operation of the state bloat attack, through this mode of operation, attackers facilitate the generation high volume and large amount of low value or zero value transactions which are insignificant to both the network and attackers.

These spam transactions are created in the network mainly for the purpose of cloging the blockchain network, causing delays and congestion in the blockchain metwork and owing to the amount of storage and space the spam consumes and takes up the blockchains bandwidth and computational resources is significantly depleted and diminished.

Additionally, the spamming of the blockchain network with transactions does not only reduce the networks overall performance, efficiency and speed of processing and conforming transactions, it also indirectly facilitate the increase in operational costs for participants and users who must invest to support the network so as to obtain increased computational resources and higher storage capacities.

DIMINISHING STORAGE EFFICIENCY

Another mode or method through which the state bloat attack is propagated and facilitated is basically by misusing, abusing and diminishing the efficiency of the blockchain storage capacity, this is done when attackers insert and dump off very large amounts of data into the blockchain network by leveraging smart contracts or transaction metadata.

And owing to the fact that the blockchain technology, although being an immutable ledger for recording data and transactions, it was programmed to handle, manage and store arbitrary and by inserting these excessive data into the blockchain storage it will only help attackers facilitate and carry out a slate bloat attack by basically consuming the storage resources of the blockchain and inflating the state size.

Additionally, this mode of operation exploits and takes advantage of the blockchain's transparent and immutable nature, in the sense that once data is written to the blockchain, it is difficult to remove, leading to a permanent increase in state size and this will lead to an increased storage requirement which has the potential of deterring new nodes from joining the network due to the high storage requirement and cost required to store the entire ledger.

EXPLOITING INACTIVE ACCOUNTS

Targeting accounts that are inactive is another method and mode of operation of the state bloat attack, in this mode of operation the attackers identify accouts that have not been used or participating in the blockchain network for a long time then they take advantage of these accounts, they send minimal transactions to the addresses of the accouts, which will directly require the blockchain network to update and increase its state size.

Therefore, by targeting and exploiting large number of inactive accounts in this way, to facilitate a state bloat attack can be successful and significantly compromise the networks proper functioning I mean, over a given period of time, the accumulation of the state data from these transactions can significantly decrease and reduce the performance and efficiency of the blockchain network.

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CONCLUSION

Therefore, I would like to say a very big thank to everyone who made the effort to read and go through this post which I have made, this is how this post of mine comes to an end or conclusion and I hope that you have been able to learn something new, this post basically discusses and explains some of the different modes of operation of the state bloat attack on the blockchain network.