Author: Gavin Andresen 2013-09-04 01:16:35
Published on: 2013-09-04T01:16:35+00:00
The latest version of Bitcoin-Qt, version 0.8.4, is now available for download. This release is a maintenance update that addresses a critical bug and three security issues, and all users are urged to upgrade. It should be noted that if you are running the previous release candidate (0.8.4rc2), then there are no changes made in this new release. For those upgrading from version 0.7.2 or earlier, the first time you run 0.8.4, your blockchain files will be re-indexed, which may take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours depending on the speed of your machine.One of the security issues resolved in this release is related to Bloom filters, which were introduced with version 0.8. An attacker could send messages that resulted in an integer division-by-zero error in the Bloom Filter handling code, causing the Bitcoin-Qt or bitcoind process to crash. Another issue resolved was a denial-of-service attack vulnerability related to RPC password guess attempts. Additionally, a better fix has been implemented for the fill-memory-with-orphan-transactions attack that was fixed in 0.8.3.Several bugs have also been addressed in this release, including fixing multi-block reorg transaction resurrection and non-standard disconnected transactions causing mempool orphans. Furthermore, there are some changes made specifically for Linux and OSX users, such as the use of 'FD_FULLSYNC' with LevelDB on OSX to prevent database corruption issues.Finally, the release includes a checkpoint at block 250,000 to help speed up initial block downloads and improve accuracy of the progress indicator when downloading. All bugs can be reported using the issue tracker at Github. Special thanks go to the contributors to this release, including Pieter Wuille, Warren Togami, Patrick Strateman, pakt, Gregory Maxwell, Sergio Demian Lerner, grayleonard, Cory Fields, Matt Corallo, and Gavin Andresen.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T16:27:52.071628+00:00