lightning-dev

Griefing-Penalty: A proposal for mitigating Griefing Attack

Griefing-Penalty: A proposal for mitigating Griefing Attack

Original Postby Subhra Mazumdar

Posted on: June 5, 2020 07:34 UTC

The email exchange discusses the issue of reverse-griefing in multi-stage contracts between parties S, A, B, C, and R.

The initial contract establishment must be done from S to R always, not R to S. However, even if S starts the locking phase, they can still face reverse-griefing if an intermediate node refuses to sign the contract. To prevent reverse-griefing, the parties must first exchange signatures for the error hash to unlock collateral and avoid griefing, and only after that, exchange signatures for the payment hash. However, there is a risk that an intermediate node may refuse to forward the contract with terms of the error hash, resulting in the preimage being unrevealed.There is also a discussion about the Mitigating Reverse-Griefing contract, which reintroduces griefing. This technique replaces reverse-griefing with the attack known as backflip-reverse-griefing, and returns the original griefing attack. It is suggested that adding more steps to a protocol adds more attack surface, making it harder to protect against attacks.