Merge pull request #51 from AAU-Dat/intro-background

Intro background + ssle

report/src/main.tex

@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@
     \input{sections/04-experimental-protocol}
     \input{sections/05-discussion}
     \input{sections/06-conclusion}
+    \input{sections/07-future-works}
 
     \clearpage
     %\printglossary[type=\acronymtype]

report/src/sections/02-background.tex

@@ -1,6 +1,10 @@
 
 \section{Background}\label{sec:background}
-In this section, we will go through some of the concepts that will be used in the rest of the paper as well as some surrounding context for the attack.
+To get a better understanding of the attack that we will be performing in this paper, we need to go through some of the concepts that are used in the attack.
+This section dives into the inner workings of the Ethereum network layer and the consensus algorithm.
+It will also delve into the inspiration for the attack.
+
+%In this section, we will go through some of the concepts that will be used in the rest of the paper as well as some surrounding context for the attack.
 
 \subsection{Ethereum and Proof of Stake}\label{subsec:ethereum-and-proof-of-stake}
 Ethereum is a blockchain platform that allows developers to create decentralized applications using smart contracts.

report/src/sections/05-discussion.tex

@@ -1,5 +1,15 @@
-%! Author = Anders
-%! Date = 15-10-2024
+
 
 \section{Discussion}\label{sec:discussion}
-This is a potential discussion section.
+
+\subsection{Ethical considerations}\label{subsec:ethical-considerations}
+As the paper tackles a potential attack on the Ethereum network, it is important to consider the ethical implications of the work.
+These implications are mainly related to the potential harm that could be caused by the attack.
+Because of the potential harm, we have decided to not disclose the exact implementation and details of the attack, and limited the information to what is necessary to understand the attack and its implications.
+This is to prevent any malicious actors from easily replicating the attack and causing harm to the mainnet.
+This is also why the GitHub repository containing the code for the attack is private.
+These considerations are also the reason why we only ran the attack on a testnet and not on the mainnet.
+Even though running the attack on the testnet had some benefits in the form of not having to worry about the loss of any real ether and that there is a greater amount of active validators to reach, it also has some drawbacks.
+The main drawback is that the testnet does not have the same restrictions for entering a validator as in the mainnet, which could affect the results of the attack.
+Since you do not have to put any money in to the system to become a validator, the density of irregular validators will be higher, which could affect the results of the attack compared to the original paper, which was run on the mainnet.
+

report/src/sections/07-future-works.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+
+
+\section{Future work}\label{sec:future-works}
+
+\subsection{potential mitigations}\label{subsec:potential-mitigations}
+At the moment there exists an improvement proposal to include a Secret Single Leader Election (SSLE) mechanism called Whisk in Ethereum~\cite{EthereumResearchSSLE2024}.
+This method aims to improve the security of the network by obfuscating the identity of the proposer.
+This would make it harder for an adversary to perform the Proposer DoS attack since the adversary would not know which validator to target.
+But even if this stops the DoS attack, it does not prevent the de-anonymization of the validators.
+But hindering a DoS attack in itself is a good reason to look at implementing SSLE in Ethereum as a further step to improve the security of the network.