A bug was recently discovered in Bitcoin Unlimited (BU), a competing Bitcoin node client, thus allowing a malicious user to crash nodes remotely. The bug was disclosed in an email on the morning of March 14, and later shared via social media.

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Bug Leaked Over Social Media after Disclosure

“We were in the process of releasing when [bitcoin developer] Peter Todd took someone else’s exploit and irresponsibly tweeted,” says Bitcoin Unlimited lead developer Andrew Stone. He references a tweet sent March 14 by Mr. Todd, an applied cryptography consultant, who has coded for another Bitcoin node client; Bitcoin Core.

Mr. Stone adds: “We have committed a fix. It took five minutes. We just need to validate some inputs that nodes send us.”

After the BU bug went viral on Bitcoin social media, there was a massive drop in the number of nodes running the Bitcoin Unlimited software. As of 3:45 PM Pacific Standard Time, the number of BU nodes had decreased to levels not seen since autumn last year. Before the bug, BU node deployment had reached an all-time high.