TechFlow reports that on September 20, according to Protos, the Bitcoin Core development team issued a critical security warning indicating a high-risk software vulnerability currently affecting 17% of Bitcoin network nodes. This vulnerability exists in all versions prior to Bitcoin Core 24.0.1 and could lead to severe denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Real-time monitoring data from blockchain analytics platform Bitnodes shows that out of 19,200 accessible Bitcoin full nodes, approximately 3,330 are affected.
Technically, the vulnerability allows attackers to exhaust a target node's bandwidth or storage resources by sending numerous low-difficulty chains of block headers, potentially causing the node to crash. The Bitcoin Core development team resolved this issue on December 12, 2022, through pull request (PR) #25717, included in version 24.0.1. The latest version of Bitcoin Core software, 27.1, already includes this fix along with other security updates.
