Description
The Bitcoin Proof-of-Work algorithm does not consider a certain attack methodology related to 80-byte block headers with a variety of initial 64-byte chunks followed by the same 16-byte chunk, multiple candidate root values ending with the same 4 bytes, and calculations involving sqrt numbers. This violates the security assumptions of (1) the choice of input, outside of the dedicated nonce area, fed into the Proof-of-Work function should not change its difficulty to evaluate and (2) every Proof-of-Work function execution should be independent. NOTE: a number of persons feel that this methodology is a benign mining optimization, not a vulnerability
References (7)
Scores
CVSS v3
7.5
EPSS
0.0081
EPSS Percentile
74.3%
Attack Vector
NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CISA SSVC
Vulnrichment
Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical Impact
partial
Details
CWE
CWE-338
Status
published
Products (1)
bitcoin/bitcoin
Published
May 24, 2017
Tracked Since
Feb 18, 2026