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British Telecom develops patent to protect Blockchain

BT

On October 31, 2017, the United Kingdom’s largest internet and telecoms provider British Telecom secured the patent for a proposed cybersecurity measure to protect Blockchain. The system enables users to process transactions via user-specific profiles that can be identified by the Blockchain’s underlying code.

The patent titled “Mitigating blockchain attack” reads “a computer implemented method for detecting malicious attacks presenting a threat to a blockchain associated with a blockchain data structure of a computing device comprising: defining by the computing device a transaction creation profile according to which transactions can be generated and submitted to the blockchain; submitting a transaction to the blockchain, the transaction causing the generation of a profiler data structure in the blockchain including executable code to generate profile transactions to be submitted to the blockchain according to the transaction creation profile; monitoring by the computing device the blockchain to identify profile transactions based on profile transactions submitted by the profile data structure generated in the blockchain; and comparing identified profile transactions with the transaction creation profile to detect a deviation from the transaction creation profile, such detection corresponding to a malicious attack occurring with respect to the blockchain.”

A part of the invention claims, “Despite the architecture of blockchain systems, malicious attacks present a threat to the security and reliability of blockchains. One such malicious attack involves a single entity (or entities under common control) procuring or appearing to procure sufficient computing resource to constitute more than half of all mining resource working with a blockchain.”

The patented system is said to be effective in protection of Blockchain against Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack such as sending excessive data to a miner to overwhelm the miner such that it cannot process normal blockchain transactions. If user details and profiles of the pre-described accounts do not match, then Blockchain code will automatically dismiss the transactions being carried out.