Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures

Date: 2010-07-28
Summary: OP_LSHIFT crash
Fix Deployment: 100%

On July 28 2010, two bugs were discovered and demonstrated on the test network. One caused bitcoin to crash on some machines when processing a transaction containing an OP_LSHIFT. This was never exploited on the main network, and was fixed by Bitcoin version 0.3.5.

After these bugs were discovered, many currently-unused script words were disabled for safety.

Date: 2010-07-28
Summary: ?
Fix Deployment: 100%

On July 28 2010, two bugs were discovered and demonstrated on the test network. One exploited a bug in the transaction handling code and allowed an attacker to spend coins that they did not own. This was never exploited on the main network, and was fixed by Bitcoin version 0.3.5.

After these bugs were discovered, many currently-unused script words were disabled for safety.

Date: 2010-07-29
Summary: Unlimited SigOp DoS
Fix Deployment: 100%

On July 29 2010, it was discovered that block 71036 contained several transactions with a ton of OP_CHECKSIG commands. There should only ever be one such command. This caused every node to do extra unnecessary work, and it could have been used as a denial-of-service attack. A new version of Bitcoin was quickly released. The new version did not cause a fork on the main network, though it did cause one on the test network (where someone had played around with the attack more).

Main article: CVE-2010-5139

Date: 2010-08-15
Summary: Combined output overflow
Fix Deployment: 100%

On August 15 2010, it was discovered that block 74638 contained a transaction that created over 184 billion bitcoins for two different addresses. This was possible because the code used for checking transactions before including them in a block didn't account for the case of outputs so large that they overflowed when summed. A new version was published within a few hours of the discovery. The block chain had to be forked. Although many unpatched nodes continued to build on the "bad" block chain, the "good" block chain overtook it at a block height of 74691. The bad transaction no longer exists for people using the longest chain.

The block and transaction:

CBlock(hash=0000000000790ab3, ver=1, hashPrevBlock=0000000000606865, hashMerkleRoot=618eba,
nTime=1281891957, nBits=1c00800e, nNonce=28192719, vtx=2)
  CTransaction(hash=012cd8, ver=1, vin.size=1, vout.size=1, nLockTime=0)
    CTxIn(COutPoint(000000, -1), coinbase 040e80001c028f00)
    CTxOut(nValue=50.51000000, scriptPubKey=0x4F4BA55D1580F8C3A8A2C7)
  CTransaction(hash=1d5e51, ver=1, vin.size=1, vout.size=2, nLockTime=0)
    CTxIn(COutPoint(237fe8, 0), scriptSig=0xA87C02384E1F184B79C6AC)
    CTxOut(nValue=92233720368.54275808, scriptPubKey=OP_DUP OP_HASH160 0xB7A7)
    CTxOut(nValue=92233720368.54275808, scriptPubKey=OP_DUP OP_HASH160 0x1512)
  vMerkleTree: 012cd8 1d5e51 618eba

Block hash: 0000000000790ab3f22ec756ad43b6ab569abf0bddeb97c67a6f7b1470a7ec1c
Transaction hash: 1d5e512a9723cbef373b970eb52f1e9598ad67e7408077a82fdac194b65333c9

Date: 2010-09-29
Summary: Never confirming transactions
Fix Deployment: 100%

Around September 29, 2010, people started reporting that their sent transactions would not confirm. This happened because people modified Bitcoin to send sub-0.01 transactions without any fees. A 0.01 fee was at that time required by the network for such transactions (essentially prohibiting them), so the transactions remained at 0 confirmations forever. This became a more serious issue because Bitcoin would send transactions using bitcoins gotten from transactions with 0 confirmations, and these resulting transactions would also never confirm. Because Bitcoin tends to prefer sending smaller coins, these invalid transactions quickly multiplied, contaminating the wallets of everyone who received them.

Bitcoin was changed to only select coins with at least 1 confirmation. The remaining sub-0.01 transactions were cleared by generators who modified their version of Bitcoin to not require the micropayment fee. It took a while for everything to get cleared, though, because many of the intermediate transactions had been forgotten by the network by this point and had to be rebroadcast by the original senders.

Date: 2011-11-11
Summary: Wallet non-encryption
Fix Deployment: 100%

Date: 2012-03-07
Summary: Transaction overwriting
Fix Deployment: 100%

Date: 2012-03-17
Summary: Non-thread safe MingW exceptions
Fix Deployment: 100%

Date: 2012-04-01
Summary: Mandatory P2SH protocol update
Deployment: 100%

Date: 2012-05-14
Summary: Block hash collision (via merkle tree)
Fix Deployment: 100%

Block hash collisions can easily be made by duplicating transactions in the merkle tree. Such a collision is invalid, but if recorded (as Bitcoin-Qt and bitcoind prior to 0.6.1 did) would prevent acceptance of the legitimate block with the same hash. This could be used to fork the blockchain, including deep double-spend attacks.

Main article: CVE-2012-3789

Date: 2012-06-20
Summary: (Lack of) orphan txn resource limits
Fix Deployment: 100%

Date: 
Summary: 
Fix Deployment: 100%

Main article: CVE-2012-4683

Date: 2012-08-23
Summary: Targeted DoS by CPU exhaustion using alerts
Fix Deployment: 100%

Main article: CVE-2012-4684

Date: 2012-08-24
Summary: Network-wide DoS using malleable signatures in alerts
Fix Deployment: 100%

Date: 2013-01-11
Summary: Remote discovery of node's wallet addresses
Fix Deployment: 99.99%

Date: 2013-01-30
Summary: Predictable change output
Fix Deployment: 99.99%

Date: 2013-01-30
Summary: A transaction that takes at least 3 minutes to verify
Fix Deployment: 0%

Main article: CVE-2013-2293

Date: 2013-02-14
Summary: Continuous hard disk seek
Fix Deployment: 99.99%

Date: 2013-03-11
Summary: Unenforced block protocol rule
Fix Deployment: 100%

Date: 2013-03-11
Summary: Inconsistent BDB lock limit interactions
Fix Deployment: 99.99%

Date: 2013-03-25
Summary: Mandatory block protocol update
Deployment: 100%

Date: 2013-05-15
Summary: Hard fork to remove txid limit protocol rule
Deployment: 99.99%

Date: 2013-06-??
Summary: Memory exhaustion with excess tx message data
Fix Deployment: 99.9%

Date: 2013-07-20
Summary: Timing leak in RPC authentication
Fix Deployment: 99.9%

Date: 2013-09-04
Summary: Remote p2p crash via bloom filters
Fix Deployment: 99.9%

Date: 2016-10-27
Summary: Debug console history storing sensitive info
Fix Deployment: 100%

Date: 2018-06-09
Summary: No commitment to block merkle tree depth

Date: 2019-06-22
Summary: Buffer overflow from SOCKS proxy

Date: 2018-09-17
Summary: Missing check for duplicate inputs
Fix Deployment: 31%

Date: 2019-06-22
Summary: Debug log injection via unauthenticated RPC

Date: 2020-06-03
Summary: Double-signing can enable unintended fees

Date: 2020-10-08
Summary: Missing low-S normalization for HTLC signatures.

Date: 2020-10-08
Summary: Invoice preimage extraction via forwarded HTLC.

Date: 2021-02-01
Summary: Qt5 remote execution

A critical vulnerability is one that will have disastrous consequences if it is exploited. A serious vulnerability is one that will have serious consequences if it is exploited[1].

• Changelog
• https://blog.bitmex.com/bitcoins-consensus-forks/