the For the Hard Fork of Bitcoin to Cash (BCH), there has been an incident. A coordinated attack, tried an older vulnerability in the ABC implementation of BCH to exploit. Subsequently, a number of empty blocks was gemint. A Patch provides for a remedy. Affects only ABC-Nodes.

By Christopher clover
16. May 2019BTC$7.993,00 0.34% part Facebook Twitter LinkedIn xing mail

It was a bit of a shock for the Bitcoin-Cash-Community: On the scheduled implementation of the Hard Fork at block height 582.600 nine transaction blocks, the were no transactions followed the first. An attacker has attempted since November of 2018, existing Bug in the Bitcoin ABC to take advantage of – without success.

The crypto-analysts of BitMEX Research reported this fact immediately to Twitter.

It seems as if it could be a Problem with the Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork Upgrade, the number of Txs [transactions] per Block is low (0 in the last of nine blocks, with the exception of the Coinbase txn). Our Mempool has 1.622 txs.

Below the chart is the number of Txs per Block and the orange line shows the Hard-Fork point.

Shortly after the error was identified. It is an older Bug in the ABC-implementation of Bitcoin Cash. This concerned the rules for Adding transactions in the Mempool, the „waiting room“ for valid transactions that are waiting to block your merge. The Nodes from the set of transactions in the Mempool before combining blocks together.

the Node is checked with the command OP_CHECKDATASIG how many signature have been checks for a transaction already completed. For the selection of transactions, it plays a role in how many times your signature has already been checked, i.e., the number of „sigOps“. The maximum number of sigOps allowed to contain a Block altogether, is limited. This has the Background that a Miner can confirm a Block with many sigOps very slowly.

this Bug exists since November Hard-Fork of Bitcoin Cash

Highly simplified, have been registered for the ABC-Nodes, the incorrect number of sigOps. The Bitcoin-Verde-developers „FerriestaPatronum“ notes on Reddit that the Bug can cause would have been at any time since the November Fork of BCH problems.

This scenario would have, at any time after the introduction of OP_CHECKDATASIG can take place. By creating many transactions that use only OP_CHECKDATASIG, and then all outputs at the same time, you would create blocks that contain what the Mempool for a very few sigOps, but everywhere else far too many sigOps contains. To mines instead of an invalid Block, the Mining Software to mine an empty Block.

attacker knew of the Bug

The attacker must already have been aware of the Bug had to share this with the Rest of the BCH Community. The Cornell Professor Emin Gün Sirer from at least one of the asks at the same time, the Timing of the attack behind.

Someone spent months sitting on this error, and decided during a planned upgrade to take advantage of. It’s pretty immature, but also a great reminder that this is a room with Byzantine players, and we must take the correctness of the Software great attention.

Immediately after the discovery of the Bugs, a Patch to resolve it was published. Operators of ABC Nodes are now encouraged to install it immediately. The other Bitcoin-to-Cash implementations, including Bitcoin Unlimited, were not affected by the Bug.

The Bitcoin-Cash exchange rate showed of the incident, little impressed, on the contrary. On the day after the Hard Fork with a daily increase of almost nine per cent (at press time) in 416 dollars. The BCH-rate has increased in the past 30 days to 45 percent.

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Bitcoin, Cash (BCH): Hard Fork with a Schnorr signature, for the time being, without MultiSig Bitcoin Cash (BCH) test: A single address is generating more than half of all transactions, Ethereum: Code for Proof-of-Stake until the end of June completed