The Latest Bitcoin Bug Was So Bad, Developers Kept Its Full Details a Secret

This week's major bitcoin bug was even worse than developers initially let on.

The bug originally rocked the bitcoin world when it was reported the vulnerability could be used to shut down a chunk of the network.

While this sounded bad enough for many, it turns out developers for Bitcoin Core kept a second, bigger part of the bug a secret.

According to the report, an anonymous user originally filed a report about the denial-of-service bug to top developers of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin ABC, the main software implementation of bitcoin cash.

About two hours later, Chaincode engineer and Bitcoin Core developer Matt Corallo realized the bug could have been exploited to print unlimited bitcoin.

For bitcoin users running a full node, the call to action is the same.

"You should not run any version of Bitcoin Core other than 0.16.3. Older versions should not exist on the network. If you know anyone who is running an older version, tell them to upgrade it ASAP," bitcoin subreddit moderator Theymos remarked in a post currently pinned to the top of the forum.

"How do we know if that vulnerability wasn't exploited already and there is someone out there with a bunch of fake bitcoin?" asked one bitcoin user.

Luckily, Bitcoin Core contributor Pieter Wuille explained, due to the power of code, bitcoin users would have been able to detect suspicious activity by now.

Still, while Bitcoin Core, litecoin and several other coins that were based Bitcoin Core's code have released a patch for the exploit, others have not - and might still be vulnerable to the inflation bug.