Blockchain technology has made it possible to store and send digital currencies. Bitcoin wallets and marketplaces have made it easy for nontechnical users to use the protocol. Since its inception, the price of Bitcoin is going up and the number of nodes in the network has increased drastically. The increasing popularity of Bitcoin has made exchanges and individual nodes a target for an attack. Understanding the Bitcoin protocol better helps security engineers to harden the network and helps regular users secure their hot wallets. In this paper, Bitcoin protocol is presented with description of the mining process which secures transactions. In addition, the Bitcoin algorithms and their security are described with potential vulnerabilities in the protocol and potential exploits for attackers. Finally, we propose some security solutions to help mitigate attacks on Bitcoin exchanges and hot wallets.

2022 IEEE International Conference on Electro Information Technology (eIT)