[Music]
hello hello yeah I guess it's my turn um
yeah surprise title actually I'm going
to talk about solo staking the Dark
Forest um yeah so today I'm going to
demo you why Dark Forest is even more
dangerous to solo stakers with an attack
that strikes at the heart of the
ethereum validation so together actually
we're going to play as an attacker um
and we're going to find out a validator
or a solo Staker that um actually runs
uh uses M boost and um which is next to
their consensus client um in order to
find them uh we actually yeah going to
do the exercise together but once we
find them what we're going to do is
we're going to disrupt the block
production of the solo Staker and stop
their rewards and manipulate the Randal
value which is responsible for assigning
new block proposers so my name is Q I'm
the decentralized technology architect
at Hopper at Hopper we buil privacy
preserving
infrastructure so we'll actually use a
Sandbox environment for Demo's purpose
but there's nothing actually preventing
this attack happening in real life right
now um our sandbox actually has three
three consensus client with a total of
192 validators in a cortosis network um
with also one MV relay and one block
Builders um for now those validators are
just you know a list of anonymous public
keys but not for long so while this test
has been running um Let Me Explain how
we actually conduct conduct this attack
so first we actually need to deize
validators um to identify our Target so
to validators actually they need to
attest block Productions and those
attestations are propagated into the
pure to network in Gossip up uh we can
actually just silently observe those
attestations to create a probalistic uh
collect like correlation between the
validators public key to the IP address
of the consensus layer
client and we actually have this oh the
test is actually been running we just
let it run for a little while block has
been proposed just leave it there so now
is the moment to actually explain the
other information that we need to
conduct this attack we actually needed a
little bit help from The Trusted MAV
relay um maybe we're just observing the
math or we are just uh you know
colluding with the MAV relay or we just
the relay ourselves right um map boost
users actually need to trust the relay
to deliver uh well basically trust them
on delivering correct content of the
block on time however they need to trust
more than that so that's the moment we
look into the database of the relay and
look at one of the new uh data table
that we created which is called metadata
here we collect all the metadata of each
htpp request that uh from connected
validators and block Builders so it
actually gives us a strong link between
the validator public key to the MF boost
IP address which sits right next to the
consensus layer client and this is just
because validators are uh they have to
they must uh register with every relay
that's connected to okay here now we
have the exercise going on um as an
attacker we just have a dashboard with
all the information we need right here
is the attestation that we have with the
occurrence of the attestation that we
accumulate with like the more
attestation we have the stronger link we
actually built between the public key of
the public uh of the uh Pi IDs and then
we know the uh the IP address from the P
ID pretty easily and then plug the
information of the MAV boost id M boost
IP address on top of
that um and next question is who to
attack so here we actually just pick uh
slot 246 and 247 but we actually have a
wider choice because uh validators they
are like the proposers are announced two
Epoch ahead of time right um to launch
this attack we use traditional uh Doos
technique uh introducing the IC flood
and S flood but just to make our attch a
bit more clear um we actually use a um
math we use a memory stress test just
directly on this uh instance to obtain
the same result and here we can see that
block 2 for6 and 2 for 7 they are
skipped and now it's time to check the
rent out value of the slot 246 and 247
they're actually the same so
congratulations fellow attackers we
managed to uh stop the block production
and also control the vend rendal
value um
yep so if I can skip to the last slide
um yeah so here we just demo the attack
as an attacker gim um I welcome
everybody uh who are interested in this
topic to further discussion discuss the
implication and improvements on how to
avoid this attack uh we're going to have
a report releas soon on The Ether Church
Forum as well as a discussion that's
going to be held at 1:30 later at the
blue discussion Corner um to close my
talk I would like to give a heart thank
you to eum Foundation um that gave us a
grant to conduct This research thank you
very much
okay thank you very much q and sorry for
missing your name now are there any
questions come on
the so just to clarify so we were able
to skip the solo scker slot here is that
the attack or was it just the Rand down
manipulation so we actually managed to
make the solo Staker not being able to
propose at the slot that they were given
yes so by doing by doing so we
interactive actually manipulate the
Randal yeah
yeah and like is there any what do you
think are the financial implications of
this should should a big staking pools
be doing this to maximize their rewards
actually good question because uh there
was one of the further discussion that
we had around this experiment is that uh
we believe that the current uh
definition of me which is the single we
always look at just one Whatever
transaction that's been included into
one block um this narrow definition
which is also the definition written on
the E theorem like the page of etherum
foundation um is a bit too narrow so by
kicking out the production of one block
we can effectively have this skip slot
me uh just an example like some uh some
people who want like to have this
multiblock me right this is one of the
attack of having that uh to achieve this
um multiblock um meth and um also it
just basically um it also creates a
threat on the uh resilience of the
network right if you can easily identify
a block proposer and then just kick them
out at the place where supposed to
produce a block then doesn't mean that
um especially for solo stakers who have
very poor let's say who doesn't really
have a access to Strong Network
protection doesn't mean that uh those
percentage of solo stakers of ethereum
network they are at risk
yeah last question please um how
difficult is it to obtain the IP address
of a certain valid data and what is the
role of MEF boost in in this kind of
process yeah thanks um it is very easy
actually right now you can just modify a
little bit of your I don't know
Lighthouse client then you can collect
them uh attestations by just put dumping
them into a database very simple data
analytic analytics and then you can have
this correlation so the longer you run
that the stronger link that you have it
uh even though there's some technical
details about how we actually going to
tackle the aggregated attestations but
yeah you know you got to figure it out
and we also know the pattern um of
Gossip up so combining these two the uh
analytics is actually pretty accurate um
and uh the role of the MAV relay is that
because solo stakers um let's say they
already invest into Hardware right to
and also put into some Stak to run their
own staking setup their goal is one of
their main goal is to make sure that
they have economic returns and very
likely they're going to introduce
whatever that help them to build the
most profitable block and here right now
we have thanks to your research Tony is
that we know that there's more than 90%
of the validators they are using a MAV
relay um or like M boost architecture
and relay which is an obvious very
obvious single point of failure no let's
say a single entity like a central
entity