Vulnerabilities have been found in Bitcoin Core that could kill network nodes

The developers have released the Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 update, which will fix a denial of service (DoS) vulnerability, due to which any miner on the Bitcoin network can shut down vulnerable Bitcoin nodes.

Although the bug did not affect the Bitcoin protocol itself, it affects all types of cryptocurrencies that use the Bitcoin Core software that supports bitcoin wallets. As stated in the message published by the Bitcoin Core developers, all nodes must be updated to the new version using a special platform procedure.

The denial of service vulnerability, listed as CVE-2018-17144 in the vulnerability database, will allow an attacker, in this case any miner on the network, to remotely cause a denial of service, crashing the node and shutting down the network. Moreover, the same thing will happen when nodes try to validate a block containing double spend transactions. Hackers who don't mind losing $80,000 could take down part of the Bitcoin network. Fortunately, such invalid blocks can only be created by miners who can create a proof-of-work (PoW) block and are also willing to lose the revenue generated.

Attackers willing to lose this amount would be able to disable the part of the network (or its Bitcoin-Qt GUI) running on the node and designed to implement the Bitcoin protocol for using remote procedure calls. If such an attacker had been found, he would most likely have been able to damage the network if the developers had not released the update so quickly.

This is not the first serious vulnerability that affects the Bitcoin network; a list of all such vulnerabilities is available at Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures page.