Block the Root Takeover: Validating Devices Using Blockchain Protocol

This study addresses a vulnerability in the trust-based STP protocol that allows malicious users to target an Ethernet LAN with an STP Root-Takeover Attack. This subject is relevant because an STP Root-Takeover attack is a gateway to unauthorized control over the entire network stack of a personal or enterprise network. This study aims to address this problem with a potentially trustless research solution called the STP DApp. The STP DApp is the combination of a kernel /net modification called stpverify and a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework in a NodeJS runtime environment in userland. The STP DApp works as an Intrusion Detection System (IPS) by intercepting Ethernet traffic and blocking forged Ethernet frames sent by STP Root-Takeover attackers. This study’s research methodology is a quantitative pre-experimental design that provides conclusive results through empirical data and analysis using experimental control groups. In this study, data collection was based on active RAM utilization and CPU Usage during a performance evaluation of the STP DApp. It blocks an STP Root-Takeover Attack launched by the Yersinia attack tool installed on a virtual machine with the Kali operating system. The research solution is a test blockchain framework using Hyperledger Fabric. It is made up of an experimental test network made up of nodes on a host virtual machine and is used to validate Ethernet frames extracted from stpverify