Litecoin [LTC] Core fixes bug that could cause DoS after discovery of exploit on Bitcoin [BTC]

The Litecoin [LTC] Core team recently rolled out an emergency update that fixes a Denial-of-Service [DoS] vulnerability in the code. This also come with a warning to upgrade to the version as soon as possible, so as to not leave the vulnerability exploitable.

The bug can be exploited by miners sending duplicate inputs and is said to be able to crash various implementations. Due to Litecoin and Bitcoin [BTC] utilizing similar code for their implementation, the bug was found on certain implementations for the Bitcoin blockchain as well.

The bug will reportedly cause Litecoin Core to crash when attempting to validate a block containing a transaction that attempts to spend the same input twice. These blocks will be rendered invalid, and can only be created by miners who are willing to lose the income from the said block as miners would not continue to mine blocks if the reward for the block is not given.

The update also came with a note that notified users that pre-0.16 versions are not compatible with wallets created post-0.16. However, the existing wallets that were already created prior to the update will not be affected.

The team clarified that the update is also compatible with the Linux Kernel, macOS 10.8+ and Windows versions after Vista. The release must also be verified with the GPG key that is provided along with the release. This ensures that the downloaded file has not been tampered with.

User prayank said on Twitter:

‘Will be interesting to know how many other altcoins are affected due to bitcoin core vulnerability discovered recently”

Developer sickpig commented on the original bug fix on Github:

“As far as I can tell the list of people to which the bug was disclosed was not exhaustive, not by a long shot, so make sure to have a proper way to tell projects/devs that their code is at risk is a must IMHO. It would be great to know what were the actions taken to put in places the aforementioned coordination process. The aim is to improve the process in case of new disclosures that could happen in the future.”