A new version of the Bitcoin Core client, the software that identifies valid blocks of the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain, went live yesterday night, as the Bitcoin Operations Technology Group (Optech) reported on Twitter.
The version of Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 corrects a denial of service (DoS) vulnerability, introduced in version 0.14.0, which had remained undetected until now, and which caused the fall of the Bitcoin Core client by trying to validate a block containing a transaction that attempted to use the same currencies for two different payments, known as a double-spending attack.
In a newsletter addressed to the Bitcoin (BTC) community, Optech explains that after submitting the update yesterday to be reviewed by prominent members of the community, the binary programs of version 0.16.3 were made available yesterday night. Optech recommends that the update should be done immediately.
The newly launched Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 addresses the DoS vulnerability of the previous version
A block containing a double-spending is not allowed by Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain, but the software error blocked the miner or the group of miners trying to validate the malicious block, instead of discarding the block. This progressive blocking effect would have disabled an essential section of the network, leading to a significant decrease in the Bitcoin (BTC) mining hashrate with all the consequent security risks that this entails.
Although a subdirectory of the Bitcoin section in Github describes in detail the procedure for upgrading to Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 and credits the developers Matt Corallo and Suhas Daftuar as responsible for introducing the code to remove the vulnerability, it is not clear who detected the error that could potentially have led to a few issues on Bitcoin (BTC) network.
Optech also reported this Tuesday that the previous version of Bitcoin Core 0.17 is also being updated to include the correction of the DoS vulnerability described above. The availability of Release Candidate 4 of Bitcoin Core 0.17, 0.17RC4, which contains the respective fixes, will soon be announced, says the Optech newsletter.
