TBTC: A Traffic-Based Bitcoin Transaction Tracing Method and its Countermeasures

With the gradual maturation and refinement of blockchain technology, the Bitcoin encrypted digital currency system has become increasingly widespread. Consequently, the security issues associated with Bitcoin have drawn greater attention from users. Bitcoin protects user privacy through its decentralized and anonymous nature, but this also makes tracing illegal transactions more difficult. Existing Bitcoin traffic layer transaction tracing approaches predominantly rely on features such as timestamps, and most tracing techniques based on probes are prone to causing network interference. In this paper, by analyzing node behavior, we summarize and distill a set of heuristic rules to reveal interaction patterns among nodes, establish correlations between transactions and the IP addresses of initiating nodes, and achieve transaction tracing. Furthermore, to conduct adversarial testing of the tracing technology, we identify factors influencing node behavior. By controlling delays and seeking high-degree nodes to join transaction paths, we aim to disrupt the interaction patterns among nodes in the normal network, thereby achieving the goal of thwarting tracing. Theoretical and experimental analyses demonstrate that the proposed transaction tracing technology achieves effective tracing results, while the two attack schemes proposed against the tracing technology can effectively achieve anti-tracing objectives.