Earlier this week, a bug was found in the Bitcoin’s core code base. Developers got in the rush, and finally released a fix on Tuesday. The bug turned out to be Denial of Service bug (DoS). Furthermore, if anyone exploited the vulnerability, this could be used to disconnect nodes, or even crash a whole segment of a network.
This was enough to rush the developers into action. The bug could be exploited by any miner, to double spend any transaction. And then, it could be reverted back in the block. Although, it would damage the currently valued $75K block reward of the miner.
The bug was dangerous for the network, but the Core Developer team has assured that the storage of the coins won’t be impacted. Bitcoin did urge all the users who were running “full nodes” to update their software.
Also, In their official blog, Bitcoin wrote: “We urge all network participants to upgrade to [the new software] as soon as possible.“.
Secret kept from the Users
Bitcoin Core Developer team chose to keep a secret from the users. Furthermore, there was a much bigger and grim side to the bug. Furthermore, It turns out that the bug could be used to create new bitcoins, apart from the existing 21 million bitcoins. In an official Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) report, they stated that this could have caused inflation and disbalance in the value of the currency.
Furthermore, since the implications of the bug was grave, the developers kept it a secret. This bought them to fix and release the patch. They also urged all miners to upgrade their software.
They stated “In order to encourage rapid upgrades, the decision was made to immediately patch and disclose the less serious denial of service vulnerability, concurrently with reaching out to miners, businesses and other affected systems, while delaying publication of the full issue to give time for systems to upgrade.”
An anonymous user reported the DoS bug to the top coders in Bitcoin core team.