They say to keep your close friends and your enemies closer. This can also be true for Blockchain technology, especially for new platforms. As has already been reported, Bitcoin Gold, the recent fork of Bitcoin, was the victim of a DDoS attack the very day it started.
According to the official Twitter account of Bitcoin Gold, the platform was under demand dam as the altcoin was looking to take off, with 10 million requests per minute. With such volume, the site was shut down during most of the launch day and took a few days to become fully operational again.
The news follows other hacks in the second quarter of 2017, where cryptocurrency was stolen, and where white hat hackers came to the rescue.
Blockchain as a solution for DDoS
The problem for Bitcoin Gold was the bandwidth – the ability of a site to handle and process data. With 10 million requests per minute, the Bitcoin Gold site simply did not have enough bandwidth to handle queries.
The decentralization provided by Blockchain has created a way to monetize and consolidate bandwidth. After all, most home Internet users only use a fraction of the bandwidth they pay for each month. With Blockchain, this bandwidth can be bundled and sold to companies seeking DDoS protection. According to hacker expert Daan Pepijn:
"During a DDoS attack, this bandwidth is used to deflect and absorb bad traffic from zombie machines (the same as those that hackers have taken). [Now] Anyone with a computer, a fast broadband connection and an available bandwidth can rent excess bandwidth to contribute to pools global and regional DDoS mitigation nodes. "
Decentralizing bandwidth requirements and pooling surplus, technology allows businesses to" bank " resources to protect against future attacks Without the solutions provided by Blockchain technology, an attack like the one on Bitcoin Gold will always stop.
Inciting the Gentiles
Blockchain is also used to induce white hat hackers seeking to protect platforms from bad hackers. By offering incentives in the form of bug bonuses, companies seek to bring their enemies into their circle of friends and produce a system where all potential weaknesses have been found, exploited and corrected.
The digital currency Dash, for example, recently used a group of about 60,000 whitehat hackers to dismantle their Blockchain platform in every possible way, looking for bugs. The process resulted in a much more secure Blockchain system for cryptocurrency.
Other crypto-currency platforms seek to employ these "good" pirates to protect them from the bad ("black hat"). White hat hackers are often encouraged by technology providers to track bugs via decentralized Blockchain platforms. According to Daan Pepijn:
" According to Bugcrowd, companies have so far paid $ 6 million since the beginning of 2017, which is already an increase of 211 % of total 2016 figure "
By encouraging white hat hackers, cryptocurrency platforms protect users against theft and against shame and massive losses. As with other industries, Blockchain technology seems to be the basis of such protection. Between whitehat groups and DDoS protection, Blockchain technology provides solutions for hacking events that were unthinkable even a few years ago.