Bitcoin is often called the golden standard for cryptocurrency, but even money based on OG blockchain has potentially catastrophic flaws hiding in the software that supports it.
On Tuesday, the developers of Bitcoin Core - the software that effectively used Bitcoin blockchain - released a new version that fixed a vulnerability that allowed the malicious user to destroy the network, which made digital coins completely useless. The error was described differently as "very scary," "bigest" and one of the most serious mistakes ever found in Bitcoin.
It is noteworthy that the error was not in the Bitcoin protocol itself, but in its most popular software implementation. Some cryptocurrencies built using Bitcoin Core code were also affected-for example, Litecoin fixed the same vulnerability on Tuesday.
The documentation describes the error as a "denial of service" vulnerability that was introduced in Bitcoin Core last year.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network that operates through a network of "nodes" that ensure that transactions comply with blockchain rules (for example, that you can not spend the same coins twice). Approximately 95 percent of users working with Bitcoin nodes use Core, and the corrected error meant that any primary node receiving the wrong block would be instantly destroyed, and not just rejected for invalidation.
In the worst case, this can lead to the failure of the entire network or its destruction, resulting in clusters of nodes will be separated from each other.
