A Sybil attack is an insidious form of attack that occurs in distributed systems, where multiple nodes or users come together to reach a common objective. To facilitate collaboration among all participants, trust and reliability must be established and maintained within the system.
Therefore, any threat to this confidence is concerning—especially when it involves an attacker crafting false identities or accounts to gain unlawful favor or control over the system. The attacker can craft numerous deceptive accounts, each with their own unique IP address, email address, or other distinguishing information, to appear like genuine users.
With such counterfeit accounts, the attacker can tamper with the system’s choices, such as voting or reputability systems. For example, in a voting model, the attacker can utilize their bogus profiles for casting multiple votes for one particular candidate or decision—thereby manipulating the voting results.
IP spoofing is another method used by perpetrators of Sybil attacks; this entails modifying the source IP address of network traffic to give the appearance that it is from a valid user. Such measures are employed to bypass the system’s safety steps, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems.