Are you wondering where the name ‘Sybil’ comes from in terms like ‘Sybil Resistance’ or ‘Sybil Attack’, where a single adversary creates multiple fake identities (or nodes) to gain unfair influence or disrupt a network? Me too!
Well here’s where…
The term “Sybil” in “Sybil attack” comes from the name of a real person—Sybil Dorsett, the pseudonym of a woman who was famously (and controversially) documented in the 1973 book Sybil as having multiple personality disorder (now called dissociative identity disorder).
Why the name?
In 2002, researchers Brian Zill and John Douceur introduced the term “Sybil attack” in a paper describing how a single user could control many fake identities in a distributed network. They named it after Sybil Dorsett because:
The attacker presents many identities, like Sybil’s multiple personalities.
So, the name is metaphorical: just as Sybil had multiple personas, an attacker simulates many users while actually being just one entity.
If you’re interested, I can link the original academic paper or explain how it influenced modern decentralized design.
Source: ChatGPT-4-Turbo
#tilstr #sybilstr
Bitcoin / Richard
npub1dw…wsqel
2025-04-04 13:14:18
Author Public Key
npub1dwekunm9w9agazkwcq88ymxmj0j3qgxcu4mwfqnjqvyusa9cuxrs0wsqelPublished at
2025-04-04 13:14:18Event JSON
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"content": "Are you wondering where the name ‘Sybil’ comes from in terms like ‘Sybil Resistance’ or ‘Sybil Attack’, where a single adversary creates multiple fake identities (or nodes) to gain unfair influence or disrupt a network? Me too!\n\nWell here’s where…\n\nThe term “Sybil” in “Sybil attack” comes from the name of a real person—Sybil Dorsett, the pseudonym of a woman who was famously (and controversially) documented in the 1973 book Sybil as having multiple personality disorder (now called dissociative identity disorder).\n\nWhy the name?\n\nIn 2002, researchers Brian Zill and John Douceur introduced the term “Sybil attack” in a paper describing how a single user could control many fake identities in a distributed network. They named it after Sybil Dorsett because:\n\nThe attacker presents many identities, like Sybil’s multiple personalities.\n\nSo, the name is metaphorical: just as Sybil had multiple personas, an attacker simulates many users while actually being just one entity.\n\nIf you’re interested, I can link the original academic paper or explain how it influenced modern decentralized design.\n\nSource: ChatGPT-4-Turbo\n\n#tilstr #sybilstr",
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