A hostile actor isolates a particular user or node in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network during an eclipse assault.
A user’s perspective of the P2P network is intended to be obscured by the attacker to set up more sophisticated attacks or cause general disruption. Sybil attacks and eclipse assaults have certain similarities, although they have different objectives.
They are identical in that a certain network gets overrun by fake peers. The distinction is that only one node is assaulted in an eclipse attack. A Sybil assault targets the entire network. Additionally, attackers can launch an eclipse attack by employing a Sybil attack to create numerous purportedly independent overlay nodes. Finally, attackers may launch an eclipse attack by using the overlay maintenance process; hence the defenses against Sybil attacks do not stop eclipse assaults.
In an eclipse attack, the attacker attempts to divert inbound and outbound connections from the target network participant’s legitimate nodes to the attacker’s nodes. The target gets cut off from the existing network by doing this.
The attacker can then control the isolated node because the target is no longer connected to the blockchain ledger. Block mining interruptions and fraudulent transaction confirmations are possible impacts of an eclipse assault.
