Secrecy and Authenticity Properties of the Lightning Network Protocol

Hans Hüttel, Vilim Staroveski

2020

Abstract

The Lightning Network is a second layer protocol that sits on top of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. It is a decentralized network of payment channels first conceptualized in 2014 and its first implementation was released in 2017. Being a fairly new technology, it may have security issues that we do not know of and the goal of this report is to analyse the Lightning Network to further investigate its security properties. The focus of this analysis is on answering whether the confidential data is kept secret and whether the user authenticity holds in the protocol. In the analysis we use the process algebra to formally describe cryptographic protocols that form the Lightning Network and an automatic cryptographic protocol analyser called ProVerif for their analysis.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Hüttel H. and Staroveski V. (2020). Secrecy and Authenticity Properties of the Lightning Network Protocol. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy - Volume 1: ICISSP, ISBN 978-989-758-399-5, pages 119-130. DOI: 10.5220/0008974801190130

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icissp20,
author={Hans Hüttel and Vilim Staroveski},
title={Secrecy and Authenticity Properties of the Lightning Network Protocol},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy - Volume 1: ICISSP,},
year={2020},
pages={119-130},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0008974801190130},
isbn={978-989-758-399-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy - Volume 1: ICISSP,
TI - Secrecy and Authenticity Properties of the Lightning Network Protocol
SN - 978-989-758-399-5
AU - Hüttel H.
AU - Staroveski V.
PY - 2020
SP - 119
EP - 130
DO - 10.5220/0008974801190130