The release of Bitcoin nodes supporting the Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) scaling framework took a nosedive today afterwards a novel exploit was uncovered past times Bitcoin Core developers.
According to Peter Todd, a cryptography consultant in addition to contributor to the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo, the newly discovered põrnikas inwards BU had been introduce for to a greater extent than than a year:
Several overlooked lines of code inwards the BU customer would permit an aggressor to arts and crafts a exceptional asking to the vulnerable BU client, which would in addition to thence freeze the customer in addition to accept it offline.
Since BU nodes alone represented less than 13% of all nodes on the Bitcoin network prior to today’s crash, the põrnikas did non endanger the Bitcoin network every bit a whole. The total of BU nodes plunged afterwards word of the põrnikas spread inside the community.
At press time, Coin.dance
charts demonstrate that the release of BU nodes plunged on Tuesday nether 320.
Bitcoin statistics portal,
NodeCounter, which is pro-BU, shows that 305 BU nodes - 5.1% of all Bitcoin nodes - are online at the moment.
Today’s incident is fix to ramp upward hostilities fifty-fifty farther betwixt Bitcoin Core in addition to Bitcoin Unlimited supporters, “If Bitcoin Unlimited was a predominant client, this is a vulnerability that would stimulate got left the entire network opened upward to beingness crashed.,” said
one Redditor on the /r/Bitcoin subreddit, which is largely pro-Bitcoin Core.
“Almost ane twelvemonth in addition to no devs inwards BU noticed this ! Talk almost lack of peer review in addition to testing . This is why yous cannot "fire" the most competent developers working on gist in addition to supercede them alongside amateurs.,” said some other Redditor.
The split upward betwixt the 2 camps also ratcheted upward yesterday, when ane of China’s largest Bitcoin mining pools, Antpool, announced total
support for Bitcoin Unlimited. But despite the drama over the past times 2 days, the cost of Bitcoin has remained stable only about $1250 - alone $100 away from its all-time high at $1350.
Network cables photograph past times Lars P.
