The World’s First Vulnerable Blockchain Will Debut at Black Hat Conference

Researchers plan to launch the intentionally vulnerable blockchain in hopes of drawing attention to the flaws of the open-sourced public ledgers. The blockchain, designed by Kudelski Security, will debut at the Black Hat conference next month.

New effort to raise awareness

Cybersecurity vendor, Kudelski Security will unveil its “purposefully vulnerable” blockchain next week, followed by a demo at the Black Hat conference next month. The FumbleChain project is designed to showcase how blockchain ecosystems could be vulnerable, as explained as head of cybersecurity research at Kudelski, Nathan Hamiel.

He noted further,

“For the most part, blockchains aren’t inherently secure. There’s an entire ecosystem around blockchain, just like there is around traditional applications. Quite often you’ll have vulnerabilities that crop up in places that are rather unexpected. What we wanted to do was create this pre-made blockchain, create this educational framework around it so you can learn more about it and more about blockchain security.”

It is written in Python 3.0, which makes it very easy for hackers to read and modify its source code. Doing this could help FumbleChain users understand blockchains and promote continuous learning too. The blockchain will be available as a demo on Kudelski’s website, and its code will be available on GitHub as well. It will be working in a way similar to that of other blockchains, where users contribute to open-source projects and developers test their skills by attacking vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, software like Bitcoin Revolution are continuing to scam hundreds of people per day, albeit in a different way.

Why blockchain needs projects like FumbleChain?

Blockchain is still in its nascent period, and there are thousands of projects on the market today that bring new use cases and variety to the industry. While blockchains are highly secure, they living within an ecosystem that could be made vulnerable because of its various applications. Jack Gold, the principal research analyst at J. Gold Associates, noted that the “devil is the details” with blockchain. He noted that the way in which a blockchain is implemented could expose it to several vulnerabilities.

Natively, blockchains are secure because of their immutability. The second layer of security comes via consensus algorithms that define which transactions should be added to a blockchain. However, depending on who runs these nodes that form a consensus, attacks can be carried out on the chains. One such example is the 51% attack on Ethereum Classic chain where bad actors took control of the chain. Hamiel believes that blockchain technology exists somewhere between the hype and loathing it receives. FumbleChain will help bridge the gaps between the two extremities.