Users advised to update to avoid the disruption of the network

May 18, 2012 13:35 GMT  ·  By

Bitcoin has released a new variant of the peer-to-peer digital currency system to address a denial-of-service (DOS) vulnerability that could have been leveraged by an attacker to isolate a victim’s node and create blockchain forks.

The security hole, considered to be critical, has been found by Forrest Voight, a 19-year-old computer programmer.

According to the developers of Bitcoin, the bug can’t be used to steal from user wallets and it cannot be leveraged to install malware.

Apparently, you can tell if you are affected if Bitcoin stops processing blocks and you have a different block count than the rest of the network.

This is joined by an error message that reads: Displayed transactions may not be correct! You may need to upgrade, or other nodes may need to upgrade.

Users are advised to update to the latest variant because the security hole could lead to the disruption of the Bitcoin network.

Bitcoin is available for download here