Hybrid Jamming Mitigation: Results and Updates

The discussion revolves around the dynamics of reputation management within a network susceptible to jamming attacks, specifically focusing on the fluctuations of an attacker's reputation due to various factors. The conversation highlights how the reputation delta varies significantly due to fluctuations in the target node's incoming revenue and the randomness of endorsed payments directed towards the attacker. It suggests that to understand the impact of these variables, one could analyze the specific points on a graph where new endorsed payments arrive at the attacker. Additionally, the dialogue proposes that attackers might alternate between successful and failed jamming attempts to circumvent static thresholds that flag excessive traffic as jamming.

Further elaborating on the mechanism to mitigate such attacks, it introduces the concept of a decaying algorithm that tracks values such as the last update timestamp, the decaying average, and a decay rate determined by a constant based on the rolling window's length. This approach aims to reduce variance and potentially smooth out statistical biases that overlook temporal sequences of jamming activities.

Moreover, the conversation touches upon the distribution of compensation for nodes involved in the jamming path, highlighting a concern regarding intermediate nodes. The current model appears to reward only the final and initial nodes in the jamming path, neglecting intermediate nodes. This oversight not only fails to compensate these nodes but also amplifies the damage caused by an attack without increasing the attacker's cost. The suggestion posits that applying local resource conservation algorithms recursively across the network, akin to DDoS mitigation techniques used on the internet, could address this imbalance.

Lastly, the discussion ventures into the feasibility of over-compensating routing nodes to encourage the forwarding of payments along low-reputation paths. This idea stems from the inherent capabilities of onion-routing, where the amount to be forwarded is part of the per-hop payload, raising questions about the economic incentives and possible adjustments in transaction fees to deter or mitigate the effects of jamming attacks.