The DOI matches its Crossref record; 168 of the 173 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A Survey on Security and Privacy Issues of Bitcoin
Open accessAbstract
Bitcoin is a popular cryptocurrency that records all transactions in a distributed append-only public ledger called blockchain. The security of Bitcoin heavily relies on the incentive-compatible proof-of-work (PoW) based distributed consensus protocol, which is run by the network nodes called miners. In exchange for the incentive, the miners are expected to maintain the blockchain honestly. Since its launch in 2009, Bitcoin economy has grown at an enormous rate, and it is now worth about 150 billions of dollars. This exponential growth in the market value of bitcoins motivate adversaries to exploit weaknesses for profit, and researchers to discover new vulnerabilities in the system, propose countermeasures, and predict upcoming trends. In this paper, we present a systematic survey that covers the security and privacy aspects of Bitcoin. We start by giving an overview of the Bitcoin system and its major components along with their functionality and interactions within the system. We review the existing vulnerabilities in Bitcoin and its major underlying technologies such as blockchain and PoW-based consensus protocol. These vulnerabilities lead to the execution of various security threats to the standard functionality of Bitcoin. We then investigate the feasibility and robustness of the state-of-the-art security solutions. Additionally, we discuss the current anonymity considerations in Bitcoin and the privacy-related threats to Bitcoin users along with the analysis of the existing privacy-preserving solutions. Finally, we summarize the critical open challenges, and we suggest directions for future research towards provisioning stringent security and privacy solutions for Bitcoin.
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“Besides, there are some other review papers on security and privacy in distributed ledgers such as [29], but they are mainly focused on bitcoin [30] or cryptocurrencies.”
From Privacy-Preserving Solutions for Blockchain: Review and Challenges (2019) · cites this paper as [29]
In the citing paper
“If a mining pool owns more than 50% of the network's computing power, then it is likely that those miners would be able to prevent the validation of proposed transactions, and consequently stop the transactions between users [73].”
From A Review of Blockchain Architecture and Consensus Protocols: Use Cases, Challenges, and Solutions (2019) · cites this paper as [73]
In the citing paper
“Due to this reason, such a kind of IIoT nodes commonly route their data through gateways by using non-P2P protocols like MQTT [30] or by making use of a fog [31] or edge computing infrastructure [32].”
From A Review on the Application of Blockchain to the Next Generation of Cybersecure Industry 4.0 Smart Factories (2019) · cites this paper as [32]
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Citations
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Flagged first, then by citations
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Casino, F., Dasaklis, T. K., & Patsakis, C. (2018) · Telematics and Informatics · doi:10.1016/j.tele.2018.11.006 · Cited by 2,954
Blockchain for internet of things: a survey
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A Survey on Consensus Mechanisms and Mining Strategy Management in Blockchain Networks
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Security and Privacy on Blockchain
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A Survey on Blockchain Interoperability: Past, Present, and Future Trends
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Metadata
- Authors
- Conti, M., Sandeep Kumar, E., Lal, C., & Ruj, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Padua (IT)
- Manipal University Jaipur (IN)
- Indian Statistical Institute (IN)
- Venue
- IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
- Published
- 2018
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 3416-3452
- ISSN
- 1553-877X (ISSN-L)
- 2373-745X
- OpenAlex
- W2624307925
- Cited by
- 1,116
- References
- 173
- Citations by year
- 2026: 84 · 2025: 125 · 2024: 94 · 2023: 135 · 2022: 145 · 2021: 164 · 2020: 160 · 2019: 137 · 2018: 67
- FWCI
- 213.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- Padua Research Archive (University of Padova) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Cryptography and Data Security
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology in Education and Learning
- Keywords
- Bitcoin, cryptocurrency security, blockchain, proof-of-work, distributed consensus, mining, vulnerability (computer security), anonymity, privacy risks, security countermeasures
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