Cardano’s blockchain successfully defends against a DDoS attack, demonstrating its robustness and taking the opportunity to improve its infrastructure.
The network continued to operate optimally despite a DDoS attack. Cardano’s blockchain successfully defended against a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack aimed at stealing staking tokens. The attack had little impact on ADA’s value, with a modest 0.4% increase over the past 24 hours, standing at $0.38 at the time of publication, according to CryptoSlate data.
Attack Details
On June 25, Fluid Token CTO Raul Antonio Rosa Padilla reported that the blockchain suffered an attack on block 10,487,530.
On Block 10,487,530, an attack on the Cardano network began.
— elraulito (@ElRaulito_cnft) June 25, 2024
🐛 Each transaction executes 194 smart contracts.
🐛 The attacker is spending 0.9 ADA per transaction.
🐛 They are filling each block with many of these transactions.
🐛 The smart contracts used are of type REWARD.
In… pic.twitter.com/QUVm0pq0Q8
According to him, the attacker tried to overload the network by spending 0.9 ADA per transaction, targeting 194 smart contracts with multiple transactions per block. Despite this, the Cardano network maintained normal operations, resulting in the attacker losing funds rather than stealing them.
Phillip Disarro, founder of Anastasia Labs, a Cardano-based development company, suggested that users could help stop the attack by deregistering any of the 194 staking credentials used by the attacker. He highlighted deregistration as the fastest method, rewarding users with 2 ADAs per credential until the attacker’s 400 ADAs were exhausted.
Disarro stated:
“Just to clarify, the network is functioning as expected. Liveness is not affected. Everything (block size limit, transaction size limits, block times) is configured so conservatively that any attack on liveness is a total waste of funds. Even with the validators deserializing 194 junk scripts (~16kb each) per transaction, the validators are fine processing these transactions (which involve deserializing about 200 times what they are used to).”
Phillip Disarro
Update: DDOSer halted his attack after reading my tweet in an effort to protect his funds. Alas, they were too late and the pillaging of their funds is already in progress.
— phil (@phil_uplc) June 25, 2024
Thanks for the free money moron.
Truly iconic that the attacker who presumably wanted to damage the…
The Community Response and Network Impact
Following Disarro’s post, the DDoS attacker ceased its efforts to avoid further financial loss. Disarro noted the irony of the attacker inadvertently funding open-source development work at Anastasia Labs and Midgard.
Although the blockchain continued to operate normally, Intersect, a Cardano membership group, reported that the attack negatively impacted some staking pool operators (SPOs). However, efforts are underway to identify solutions to prevent future occurrences. The group commented:
“The network has experienced higher than normal load and some SPOs have been negatively impacted due to an intensification in block height battles. However, the chain as a whole is performing as expected, with only a small impact on overall transaction times and a reduction in chain density.” Source.
@IntersectMBO
The Cardano DDoS attack incident demonstrates the robustness and resilience of its network. Despite the attacker’s attempts, the blockchain continued to operate without significant interruptions, evidencing the effectiveness of its blockchain security measures. In addition, the Cardano community showed rapid response and collaboration to mitigate the impact, highlighting the collective strength and commitment to continuous improvement of the network.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a DDoS attack? A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a server, service, or network by overloading the target with a flood of Internet traffic.
- How did the DDoS attack affect Cardano? The attack had minimal impact on Cardano’s network, which continued to operate normally. Some staking pool operators experienced difficulties, but the overall system remained stable.
- What measures were taken to mitigate the attack? Cardano users helped mitigate the attack by unregistering the staking credentials used by the attacker, draining their funds and thus stopping the attack.
- Why did the attacker end up funding network upgrades? The attacker spent funds on the failed attempt to overload the network, and these funds ultimately benefited open-source development projects within the Cardano ecosystem.
- What did the Cardano community learn from this incident? The Cardano community learned about the importance of collaboration and rapid response to address threats, as well as the effectiveness of its conservative network configurations in resisting attacks.