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Illicit Blockchain Content: Its Different Shapes, Consequences, and Remedies

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Blockchains

Part of the book series: Advances in Information Security ((ADIS,volume 105))

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Abstract

Augmenting public blockchains with arbitrary, nonfinancial content fuels novel applications that facilitate the interactions between mutually distrusting parties. However, new risks emerge at the same time when illegal content is added. This chapter thus provides a holistic overview of the risks of content insertion as well as proposed countermeasures. We first establish a simple framework for how content is added to the blockchain and subsequently distributed across the blockchain’s underlying peer-to-peer network. We then discuss technical as well as legal implications of this form of content distribution and give a systematic overview of basic methods and high-level services for inserting arbitrary blockchain content. Afterward, we assess to which extent these methods and services have been used in the past on the blockchains of Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin SV, respectively. Based on this assessment of the current state of (unwanted) blockchain content, we discuss (a) countermeasures to mitigate its insertion, (b) how pruning blockchains relates to this issue, and (c) how strategically weakening the otherwise desired immutability of a blockchain allows for redacting objectionable content. We conclude this chapter by identifying future research directions in the domain of blockchain content insertion.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Concerning the applicability of TMG and Blockchain as a Telemedium cf. Peters [57].

  2. 2.

    A centralized related service is, for example, Microsoft’s PhotoDNA service, URL: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Roman Matzutt, Martin Henze & Klaus Wehrle

  2. Fraunhofer FKIE, Wachtberg, Germany

    Martin Henze

  3. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

    Dirk Müllmann

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  1. Roman Matzutt
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  2. Martin Henze
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  4. Klaus Wehrle
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Correspondence to Roman Matzutt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney Kensington, NSW, Australia

    Sushmita Ruj

  2. School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney Kensington, NSW, Australia

    Salil S. Kanhere

  3. Department of Mathematics, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Mauro Conti

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Matzutt, R., Henze, M., Müllmann, D., Wehrle, K. (2024). Illicit Blockchain Content: Its Different Shapes, Consequences, and Remedies. In: Ruj, S., Kanhere, S.S., Conti, M. (eds) Blockchains. Advances in Information Security, vol 105. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32146-7_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32146-7_10

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