How your cryptocurrency can be hacked

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are often lauded as “unhackable” due to their foundations of cryptography and proof-of-work consensus mechanisms.

However, there are a certain theoretical attacks which could be used to hit the blockchains the cryptocurrencies are based on.

The most prominent of these is a 51% or “double-spend” attack, which is possible when an attacker controls more mining power than the rest of the network combined.

It can be extremely difficult to perform this attack against large blockchains with evenly-distributed hash power and multiple nodes, but it is theoretically possible.

Smaller cryptocurrencies with less total hashing power are more vulnerable to this type of attack, as seen recently in a number of small tokens.

The profitability of these attacks also vary, depending on the strength of the blockchain’s mining power.

While major blockchains have so far remained safe from double-spend attacks, we have outlined the basic…