Published on: 2011-12-25T21:15:22+00:00
Gavin Andresen, a prominent developer for Bitcoin, recently addressed a remote vulnerability that was reported by a user named makomk. The vulnerability affected individuals who had pulled and compiled their own bitcoind/bitcoin-qt from the source tree within the past five days. The issue arose when Andresen refactored the ConnectInputs() function into two parts, forgetting to duplicate a check in ConnectInputs for an out-of-range previous-transaction-output in the FetchInputs() method.This oversight led to the creation of a method that could potentially crash with an out-of-bounds memory access if given an invalid transaction. However, this bug also helped prevent a possible OP_EVAL-related denial-of-service attack. To fix the vulnerability, a check was implemented in FetchInputs and an assertion in AreInputsStandard.It is important to note that the bug-fix does not impact the "mining only" code that some miners and pools have been utilizing. Fortunately, makomk discovered and reported the vulnerability before any binaries with the vulnerability were released. Nonetheless, if it had not been for makomk testing unrelated code, the vulnerability could have made its way into the next release.In light of this incident, Andresen expressed his desire to have an "intelligent, bitcoin-specific fuzzing tool" that can automatically detect similar bugs before each release. He called upon anyone who possesses such a tool to come forward. This serves as a reminder of the significance of thorough testing and identifying vulnerabilities prior to releasing updates to ensure the protection of users.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T02:47:15.392263+00:00