British Telecom Secures Patent for a Cybersecurity Method to Protect Blockchain

Great Britain’s biggest Internet and telecoms provider British Telecommunications PLC (BT) has secured a patent for its proposed cybersecurity system for Blockchain protection in late October.

The system limits the users who can commit transactions to the system via user-specific profiles.

Based on the patent, one use case involving the patent is the so-called “majority control attacks” or “51 percent attacks,” in which a hostile force with over 50 percent of the total computing power tries to control a Blockchain network.

Part of the patent reads:

"Despite the architecture of Blockchain systems, malicious attacks present a threat to the security and reliability of Blockchains."

When the system detects an attack, it will automatically stop carrying out transactions, thus, preventing the success of even a majority attack.

Other features of the patented system

Based on the patent documents, the system can also effectively protect a Blockchain against such assaults as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which are aimed at completely overwhelming a miner with a high number of requested transactions.

The patent, however, fails to discuss how the system deals with such attacks.

Under the patent, the system creates user-specific profiles that can be identified by the Blockchain’s underlying code. If the users making transactions do not match the profiles of the pre-described accounts, the Blockchain code will automatically reject the transactions being carried out.

Moreover, British Telecom further claimed that:

“It would be advantageous to provide a mechanism for detecting and mitigating threats to Blockchain environments.”

The company added that while the patent explains the method of verifying transactions using the energy-intensive mining process utilized by the virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, the process is in no way related to the patented system.

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