Vulnerability Found On Bitcoin ABC App: Developers Address It

By Solange Murielle May 8, 2018 Digital Currency No Comments

Not long ago, precisely on April 26, 2018, Bitcoin ABC development team received an anonymous notification of a vulnerability found in the ABC 0.17.0 client.

Developers say that the fault might have generated an accidental breach in the Bitcoin Cash Network. According to reports, an attacker can build up a malignant transaction that would be accepted by Bitcoin_ABC 0.17.0 miners. Nevertheless, the block would be rejected by the genuine versions of Bitcoin Cash-compatible mining app. Examples include the Bitcoin Unlimited client.

The development team says, “BUCash and versions of Bitcoin-ABC prior to 0.17.0 could be split from the majority Bitcoin Cash blockchain — Only Bitcoin ABC and BUCash nodes were included in the analysis of this vulnerability.”

The Bitcoin ABC development team was able, after testing and analyzing the vulnerability, to build an app for the issue immediately. “Bitcoin ABC 0.17.1 fixes this problem,” as the ABC team explains in its incident report. The new software has been forwarded for proper analysis to verified BCH miners.

Shaun Chong, the lead developer of the Bitcoin.com’s Mining Pool said, “Bitcoin ABC dealt with the situation professionally and responsibly — They were quick to patch the bug and distribute it privately to miners, hence reducing the risk of a chain split.”

“Bitcoin.com Pool mines blocks with Bitcoin Unlimited, and encourages the development of multiple Bitcoin Cash full node implementations, to keep the Bitcoin cash network resistant to bugs from a single implementation.”

All 0.17.0 users are hence asked to upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible so as to avoid any further possible incident. The team says that they will be taking extreme measures in the future to prevent the reoccurrence of such events. The team emphasizes that “Bitcoin ABC is in discussions with industry participants to establish a formal bug bounty system.”

ABC developers are grateful to the anonymous source who revealed the vulnerability in their system, and they conclude in this manner: “We also want to thank the miners for their cooperation, understanding and for the fast and professional way in which they took action to protect the Bitcoin Cash network and its users.”