Bitcoin blockchain vulnerable to internet routing attacks "BTC-Hijack"

Bitcoin is generally believed to be unstoppable due to its decentralized nature. However, the cryptocurrency’s operations seem to be getting concentrated in fewer spots of key infrastructure, increasing its vulnerability to attacks.

BTC-Hijack, is Bitcoin's team in charge of examining potential threats to the Bitcoin network. The group’s main focus is studying how the network gets affected by internet routing attacks and malicious internet service providers (ISP). Their website has revealed that there are two major threats facing Bitcoin blockchain at the moment. These are based on two facts: Bitcoin's network is centralized in just a few networks worldwide and the efficiency of internet routing attacks is very high.

The first threat is partition attacks. The website writes that all an ISP needs to split the coin’s network is to hijack a few IP prefixes. Consequently, a parallel Blockchain would be formed, which can further lead to chaos among miners as blocks being created on the smaller network would be discarded.

Delay attacks are the second threat to the cryptocurrency’s blockchain. Any ISP can prolong the bitcoin block delivery time from the current 10 minute period to a 20 minute one, whereas a more efficient one can even push it to 30 minutes. This delay would go undetectable by authorities as the ISP would still be completely under the radar.

These both are obviously highly undesirable situations for developers and miners alike. Bitcoin is the world’s largest Cryptocurrency and prides itself on being the first ever decentralized digital currency. Its decentralized nature, however, has been questioned several times. “Although one can run a Bitcoin node anywhere on earth, the nodes that compose the network today are far from being spread uniformly around the globe,” the site reads.

‘Bitcoin nodes’ are the infrastructure responsible for verifying transactions and protecting the network from double spending. The website reveals that only 13 ISPS host 30% of the entire Bitcoin network. Such a small number leads to increased vulnerability as an attack on even one of the major areas of computing power can result in serious damage to the entire network.

For Bitcoiners, this serves as a warning. Cryptocurrencies are not unknown to attacks and even a currency with such a good cryptographic protection is highly liable to hacks. Although the aforementioned issues are not creating many problems at the moment, the situation can worsen over time.