Treating ‘ASICBOOST’ as a Security Vulnerability

Summary:

Bitcoin developers have assigned a CVE identifier, CVE-2017-9230, for the security vulnerability known as ASICBOOST. The vulnerability is related to an attack methodology which exploits the design of Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm. The algorithm assumes that every execution of the proof-of-work function will be independent and that the choice of input should not change its difficulty to evaluate. However, ASICBOOST violates these assumptions by manipulating the structure of the input outside of the dedicated nonce area. The vulnerability was originally promoted as a patented mining optimization, but has become regarded as an actively exploited security vulnerability of Bitcoin. The patent holder of this particular security vulnerability has a dedicated website: https://www.asicboost.com/. The CVE team at Mitre suggested the description for CVE-2017-9230, which was found more appropriate than the one proposed by the developer who assigned the vulnerability number. Several discussions and academic write-ups on the vulnerability are available online. Ryan Grant discussed the perverse incentives created by ASICBOOST while Tier Nolan discussed ASICBOOST's non-independent PoW calculation. Evidence of active exploitation of the vulnerability was provided by Gregory Maxwell. Original discovery of the vulnerability was made by Dr. Timo Hanke and Sergio Lerner. Cameron Garnham reported the vulnerability to CVE. The vulnerability affects all versions of Bitcoin and creates unfair advantages in Bitcoin mining, leading to layer-violations and creating perverse system incentives. The vulnerability falls under Cryptocurrency Mining Algorithm Weakness and Cryptocurrency Proof-of-Work Algorithm Weakness. The vendor of the product is Bitcoin, and they have confirmed the existence of the vulnerability. References to the academic write-ups and discussions are available in the email thread attached to the context.

Updated on: 2023-06-12T00:51:08.609106+00:00