Lucianna Kiffer, Research Assistant Professor, IMDEA Networks
Many blockchain networks aim to preserve the anonymity of validators in the peer-to-peer (P2P) network, ensuring that no adversary can link a validator’s identifier to the IP address it is running from, due to associated privacy and security concerns. This talk presents work that demonstrates that the Ethereum P2P network does not offer this anonymity. I will present our methodology that enables any node in the network to identify validators hosted on connected peers and empirically verify the feasibility of the proposed method. Using data collected from four nodes over three days, we locate more than 15% of Ethereum validators in the P2P network. The insights gained from our deanonymization technique provide valuable information on the distribution of validators across peers, their geographic locations, and hosting organizations. The work presented in this talk has been awarded a bug bounty by the Ethereum Foundation.