The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) marked bitcoin listed as a cybersecurity risk on December 9, drawing attention to the security flaw that allowed the development of the Ordinals Protocol in 2022.
According to database records, a data carrier The limit can be avoided by masking data as code in some versions of bitcoin Core and bitcoin Knots. “Just as the Inscriptions in 2022 and 2023 exploited it in the wild,” the document reads.
Being added to the NVD list means that a specific cybersecurity vulnerability has been recognized, cataloged, and deemed important for public awareness. The database is managed by the National Institute of Standards and technology (NIST), an agency of the United States Department of Commerce.
The vulnerability of the bitcoin network is currently being analyzed. As a possible impact, it could result in large amounts of non-transactional data spamming the blockchain, which could increase the size of the network and negatively impact performance and fees.
On the NVD website, a recent post by bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr on X (formerly Twitter) is presented as an information resource. Dashjr alleges that the registrations exploit a vulnerability in bitcoin Core to send spam to the network. “I guess it's like getting junk mail that you have to check every day to find out who your contacts are. This slows down the process,” one user wrote in the discussion.
Why is it relevant to ordinals?
An enrollment involves embedding additional data to a specific satoshi (the smallest unit of bitcoin). This data can be anything digital, such as an image, text, or other forms of media. Every time data is added to a satoshi, it becomes a permanent part of the bitcoin blockchain.
Although data embedding has been part of the bitcoin protocol for some time, its popularity only increased with the arrival of Ordinals in late 2022, a protocol that allowed unique digital arts to be directly integrated into bitcoin transactions, similar to how They make non-fungible tokens (nft). ) runs on the ethereum network.
Ordinals transaction volume clogged the bitcoin network several times during 2023, leading to increased competition to confirm transactions, increasing fees and slowing down processing time.
If the bug is fixed, it has the potential to restrict Ordinals signups on the network. When asked if Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens would “cease to exist” if the vulnerability was fixed, Dashjr responded: “Correct.” However, existing registrations would remain intact due to the immutability of the network.
Magazine: Ordinals turned bitcoin into a worse version of ethereum: can we fix it?
