Hi,

Im new on this forum and I tried to find something about the 34% attack. It is unclear what the effect of that attack would be on the IOTA network (if it were possible, so I guess if there was no coordinator). I found this: XY-Attack but it does not really explain what the attacker does to the nodes.. Does he/she force the edge nodes that they are connected with to do something?

And, how does the 'layering' work, it is suggested that the attacker becomes more powerful as they gain more Computing power/omnipotence, but I don't really understand how this works. Could anyone further explain?


GIC

Hey @GIC3,

thank you for your post and welcome to the Forum!
Unfortunately I can't answer your question, I just lack this kind of technical understanding...
And while I still hope that someone more knowledgable will respond to you here, you might also like to check out 
https://iota.stackexchange.com/ orsome of the more technical channels (like maybe #tanglemath or #security) on our Discord.
Here's an invite link: https://discord.gg/hgbDnBd 

All the best!

Alexa

I wouldn't be able to help anyone without thetangle.org-explorer. If you feel like you want to support its developer Mathieu Viossat in maintaining his service, please consider a donation to the address shown here: https://thetangle.org/about. Thank you!

+x

 

GIC3 - 7 May 2018

Hi,

Im new on this forum and I tried to find something about the 34% attack. It is unclear what the effect of that attack would be on the IOTA network (if it were possible, so I guess if there was no coordinator). I found this: XY-Attack but it does not really explain what the attacker does to the nodes.. Does he/she force the edge nodes that they are connected with to do something?

And, how does the 'layering' work, it is suggested that the attacker becomes more powerful as they gain more Computing power/omnipotence, but I don't really understand how this works. Could anyone further explain?


GIC

From my understanding, as conveyed in the X-Y Attack writeup that you linked, hashing power is only one component required to execute a PoW based attack. Node connectivity and location in the tangle/omnipresence is purportedly an equivalent factor when it comes to these sorts of network attacks, but nothing concrete has been elucidated yet. These topics are probably still under research. Great question though.