Bitcoin’s LN Developer Discloses the Network’s Vulnerability

Bitcoin’s (BTC) Lightning Network (LN) developer Rusty Russel has published the full disclosure of the network’s vulnerability discovered in August, accompanied by a solution.

Russel pointed out that the vulnerability appeared while opening funding channels. The described process does not require that receivers check if a transaction is the one promised by the funder in terms of amounts and the actual scriptpubkey. 

Scriptpubkey is an output transaction script that requires specific conditions to be observed for a receiver to spend their Bitcoins. The file explains:

“A lightning node accepting a channel must check that the funding transaction output does indeed open the channel proposed. Otherwise an attacker can claim to open a channel but either not pay to the peer, or not pay the full amount. Once that transaction reaches the minimum depth, it can spend funds from the channel. The victim will only notice when it tries to close the channel and none of the commitment or…