Censorship Attack

Overview

A censorship attack targets availability and fair inclusion rather than directly forging ownership. Attackers may control block production, relays, validators, gateways, infrastructure, or network connectivity and then exclude transactions matching chosen addresses, fees, contracts, or policies.

Attacks can be continuous, intermittent, targeted, or probabilistic. Even without majority control, concentrated infrastructure or coordinated operators may delay activity long enough to cause liquidation, missed payments, governance failure, or loss of commercial opportunity.

Defenses include diverse validators and relays, alternate submission channels, inclusion monitoring, encrypted or private transaction paths, economic penalties, and fallback execution. Response plans should distinguish ordinary congestion from selective exclusion using comparative evidence across users, routes, and time.

Censorship Attack is an attack or weakness pattern that deliberately prevents selected valid transactions or users from receiving normal processing, confirmation, relay, or network access. A censorship attack harms reliable inclusion, and detection requires showing selective exclusion rather than merely slow processing or general congestion.

Assessment of Censorship Attack should trace prevention of selected valid transactions or users from receiving normal processing, confirmation, relay, or network access from prerequisite and entry point through observable impact on the affected service. A theoretical weakness or scanner result involving selected valid transactions, users from receiving normal processing, and confirmation should not be reported as exploitation without corroborating logs, transactions, or configuration evidence. Prevention, detection, containment, and recovery for the Censorship attack path should be tested against the architecture associated with selected valid transactions, users from receiving normal processing, and confirmation.

Retesting for Censorship Attack should reproduce the Censorship attack path involving selected valid transactions, users from receiving normal processing, and confirmation, examine adjacent paths, and verify the conditions for safely returning the affected service to normal operation.