Book Image

Mastering Blockchain

Book Image

Mastering Blockchain

Overview of this book

Blockchain is a distributed database that enables permanent, transparent, and secure storage of data. The blockchain technology is the backbone of cryptocurrency – in fact, it’s the shared public ledger upon which the entire Bitcoin network relies – and it’s gaining popularity with people who work in finance, government, and the arts. Blockhchain technology uses cryptography to keep data secure. This book gives a detailed description of this leading technology and its implementation in the real world. This book begins with the technical foundations of blockchain, teaching you the fundamentals of cryptography and how it keeps data secure. You will learn about the mechanisms behind cryptocurrencies and how to develop applications using Ethereum, a decentralized virtual machine. You will explore different blockchain solutions and get an exclusive preview into Hyperledger, an upcoming blockchain solution from IBM and the Linux Foundation. You will also be shown how to implement blockchain beyond currencies, scability with blockchain, and the future scope of this fascinating and powerful technology.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Mastering Blockchain
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Security


Even though blockchains are generally secure and make use of asymmetric and symmetric cryptography as required throughout the blockchain network, there still are few caveats that can result in compromising the security of the blockchain.

There are a few examples of transaction malleability, eclipse attacks, and possibility of double spending in bitcoin that, in certain scenarios, have been shown to work by various researchers. Transaction malleability opens up the possibility of double withdrawal or deposit by allowing a hacker to change a transaction's Unique ID before the bitcoin network can confirm it, resulting in a scenario where it would seem that transactions did not occur. BIP 62 is one of the proposals along with segregated witness (segwit) that have suggested solutions to solve this issue. It should be noted that this is a problem only in the case of unconfirmed transactions, that is, scenarios where operational processes rely on unconfirmed transactions. In the case of...