Bitcoin Core Developers Move to Fix Denial-of-Service Software Bug

An abnormally severe bug was discovered in bitcoin’s software, prompting developers to put together and release a fix on Tuesday.

Fixed and revealed to the wider public by way of Bitcoin Core software version 0.16.3, the vulnerability is a denial-of-service bug. If exploited, it can be used to take out nodes and at worst, temporarily crash a significant segment of the network.

However, not everyone has the power to take advantage of the bug. Only miners – those that run hardware and spend energy ordering transactions on the network – can exploit the vulnerability by double spending a transaction and placing it in a block.

But, it’s not exactly painless for them to execute, either. If they try the attack, they would lose their block reward, which is worth more than $75,000 at today’s prices.

The vulnerability was introduced in Bitcoin Core version 0.14.0, which was first released in March 2017. But the issue wasn’t found until just two days ago, prompting contributors to the…