Friday, 21 September 2018

Deny, defend, deflect and downplay: a strange response to a critical vulnerability (explained)

Has anyone else noticed the large number of people in the threads discussing Bitcoin Core CVE-2018-17144 that are trying to massively downplay the severity of this security vulnerability?

This is a vulnerability that has existed in the Bitcoin Core codebase for years and either had or still has the potential to cause:

  • crashing nodes
  • payment reversals after multiple confirmations
  • emergency miner and developer responses
  • defrauding of Lightning Network users
  • chain forks
  • lost profit to miners. Note: the small miners would likely be worse impacted due to the likelihood that they have smaller profit margins. This could have increased miner centralization.
  • the possibility of having to shut the entire BTC network down.
  • a market price crash.
  • long term reduced faith in the BTC chain
  • cascading affects on to other crypto currencies that share or forked the vulnerable Bitcoin Core code base.

If someone is aware of these listed things and they are trying to claim or imply this vulnerability is not severe, then in all likelihood they are snakes: deceptive manipulators whispering false or misleading narratives into people's ears in order to further an ulterior agenda. In this case, the ulterior agenda just might be, to maintain the illusion that the Bitcoin Core project is populated by the most wise and the most infallible men and that these men should be the sole bastions and stewards of Bitcoin.

submitted by /u/hapticpilot
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/9hnnte/deny_defend_deflect_and_downplay_a_strange/

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