Everyone is watching Babylon’s mathematical model and thinks that as long as you don’t hand over the private key, cross-chain bridge hackers have no way to do anything. But today I want to discuss an even darker scenario: under the EOTS mechanism, the hacker doesn’t even need to “steal” your coins—they only need to use “destruction” to extort you.
Let’s break down the node operation architecture of @BabylonLabs_io . To provide real-time security consensus for those PoS new public chains, the Finality Provider (node operator/provider) must stay online 24/7 and continuously produce cryptographic signatures for new blocks.
This leads to a fatal practical paradox: the EOTS key used for signing by the node must be “hot”—connected to the internet in real time.
For Bitcoin whales who are used to cold-wallet multisignature and physical isolation, binding the power to create and destroy vast amounts of funds to an environment that is exposed on the public internet at a given moment is, in itself, extremely counterintuitive.
What happens if this node server gets compromised by a hacker?
Interestingly, due to Babylon’s underlying UTXO locking mechanism, the hacker indeed cannot move those BTC to their own wallet. But don’t be too happy yet—because the hacker can do something even more terrifying: maliciously trigger equivocation (double signing).
The hacker only needs to run a simple script inside the server, causing the node to sign two different pieces of data at the same block height. In an instant, the cryptographic penalty mechanism of EOTS is triggered, and all BTC staked under that node’s identity will be relentlessly slashed on the Bitcoin mainnet.
Do you get the dark logic now? In the security community, this is called a “griefing attack (Griefing Attack).”
A hacker can completely compromise a top-tier node that manages tens of thousands of BTC, then send a ransom email to the node’s owner: “Send $10 million to my mixing service, or else I’ll immediately press the double-sign button so the protocol will legally burn your customers’ value worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
With traditional cross-chain bridges being hacked, the hacker’s goal is to steal the money and cash out. But in Babylon’s purely cryptographic penalty system, the hacker directly turns the ability to legally destroy your assets into a bargaining chip for a sky-high ransom.$BABY #baby
Let’s break down the node operation architecture of @BabylonLabs_io . To provide real-time security consensus for those PoS new public chains, the Finality Provider (node operator/provider) must stay online 24/7 and continuously produce cryptographic signatures for new blocks.
This leads to a fatal practical paradox: the EOTS key used for signing by the node must be “hot”—connected to the internet in real time.
For Bitcoin whales who are used to cold-wallet multisignature and physical isolation, binding the power to create and destroy vast amounts of funds to an environment that is exposed on the public internet at a given moment is, in itself, extremely counterintuitive.
What happens if this node server gets compromised by a hacker?
Interestingly, due to Babylon’s underlying UTXO locking mechanism, the hacker indeed cannot move those BTC to their own wallet. But don’t be too happy yet—because the hacker can do something even more terrifying: maliciously trigger equivocation (double signing).
The hacker only needs to run a simple script inside the server, causing the node to sign two different pieces of data at the same block height. In an instant, the cryptographic penalty mechanism of EOTS is triggered, and all BTC staked under that node’s identity will be relentlessly slashed on the Bitcoin mainnet.
Do you get the dark logic now? In the security community, this is called a “griefing attack (Griefing Attack).”
A hacker can completely compromise a top-tier node that manages tens of thousands of BTC, then send a ransom email to the node’s owner: “Send $10 million to my mixing service, or else I’ll immediately press the double-sign button so the protocol will legally burn your customers’ value worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
With traditional cross-chain bridges being hacked, the hacker’s goal is to steal the money and cash out. But in Babylon’s purely cryptographic penalty system, the hacker directly turns the ability to legally destroy your assets into a bargaining chip for a sky-high ransom.$BABY #baby