I am studying a hot research report. Two Bitcoin engineers Braydon Fuller and Javed Khan have already fixed the dangerous vulnerability on the Bitcoin blockchain network in 2018 which is known as INVDoS.Previously these two engineers thought they have already patched the issue but they rediscovered the bug which could promote hackers to shut down the entire networks. Engineers have found two other blockchain iterations: Btcd and Decred. Fortunately, Khan and other engineers gathered to fix the vulnerabilities in late August and have saved us from a huge possible enemy.
Photo:-Braydon Fuller and Javed Khan, research report
So how the attack works?
Researchers have named “denial-of-service” for the new vulnerability and according to them, it was “easily exploitable” by hackers. Let's see, the attack would work like this. One hostile blockchain node—a member/miner of the network that validates transactions—floods another non-existent transaction which leads memory to grow endlessly. This sort of attack will crash the process by promoting irreversible damage and eventually, lead hackers to shut down entire networks.
If this bug was not fixed at the right time, Litecoin and Namecoin blockchains were also at the risk. The report has also suggested, Bitcoin Lightning Network could be the first target.
So, if you are still using the older version of Bitcoin software, please upgrade to latest version as soon as possible 🙏 References:-
https://invdos.net/paper/CVE-2018-17145.pdf
https://decrypt.co/41685/developers-reveal-2018-bitcoin-bug-used-to-crash-entire-networks