The application was submitted to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in July 2016 and details both a system and methods for monitoring transactions on a particular blockchain in a bid to “detect malicious attacks”, the application’s authors write. The patent represents BT’s first known involvement with the tech, according to CoinDesk.
The proposed system, according to BT, could be used to create a “a transaction creation profile”, suggesting that it would be applied to a permissioned network in which only certain participants are allowed to submit transactions.
Threats identified in the application include 51% attacks, through which an entity controlling a majority of hashing power has the theoretical power to start reordering transactions. “Other attacks also pose a threat to the blockchain and its users, including: the Sybil attack in which an entity attempts to fill a miner network with clients controlled centrally or pseudonymous miners; and various denial of service attacks such as sending excessive data to a miner to overwhelm the miner such that it cannot process normal blockchain transactions,” the application goes on to state.
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