China News by Thebittimes.Com

Bitcoin Core developers reversed their plan to deprecate the user configurability of OP_RETURN’s default datacarriersize just hours before the scheduled release of Core version 30 (v30), one of the most controversial and widely publicized changes to Bitcoin’s dominant software for thousands of node operators. Pull request (PR) 33453 was merged by Core maintainer Ava Chow into Bitcoin Core’s master branch via GitHub yesterday evening New York time. The eleventh-hour accommodation signaled a slight victory for a dissident movement led by Knots node operators who have vocally protested Core’s easements of OP_RETURN’s datacarriersize. In the view of many Knots node operators, most nodes’ memory pools (mempools) should reject transactions by default carrying large amounts of data unrelated to the on-chain movement of bitcoin (BTC). Rather than burden node operators with storing and relaying arbitrary data around the network for non-currency uses of BTC, defaults should det...

Bitcoin developers today disclosed details of another high-severity software bug. According to senior Core developers, over 13% of the home and business computers around the world that enforce Bitcoin’s rules are vulnerable to a remote shutdown. The bug, named CVE-2024-35202, affects Bitcoin nodes running Core software prior to version 25.0. Nodes that have not updated to at least 25.0 allow an attacker to remotely exploit an assertion in the software logic that handles block transaction (‘blocktxn’) messages. Specifically, the vulnerability stems from Core’s compact block protocol, which uses shortened transaction identifiers to reduce internet bandwidth use. An attacker can trigger a collision in these identifiers, causing the node to request a full block. Although requesting a full, unabridged block is a safety precaution, software versions prior to 25.0 have a flaw in their handling logic of subsequent blocktxn messages. In short, the node can be forced into an invalid state th...

Antoine Riard believes the Bitcoin community faces a "hard dilemma" as a new class of replacement cycling attacks threatens the Lightning Network. Security researcher and developer Antoine Riard is stepping down from the Lightning Network’s development, citing security issues and fundamental challenges to the Bitcoin ecosystem.  According to a thread on the Linux Foundation’s public mailing list, Riard believes the Bitcoin community faces a "hard dilemma " as a new class of replacement cycling attacks puts Lightning in a "perilous position." How does a lightning replacement cycling attack work? There's a lot of discussion about this newly discovered vulnerability on the mailing lists, but the actual mechanism is a bit hard to follow. So here's an illustrated primer... 1/n pic.twitter.com/mvvS8bEc5f — mononaut (@mononautical) October 21, 2023 The Lightning Network is the second-layer solution built over the Bitcoin blockchain. It is designed to...