National Vulnerability Database (NVD) Marked The inscription of Bitcoin as a cybersecurity risk on December 9 draws attention to the security flaw that enabled the development of the Ordinals protocol in 2022.
According to database records, a data carrier In some versions of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots the limitation can be circumvented by disguising data as code. “As exploited in the wild by inscriptions in 2022 and 2023,” the document reads.
Being added to the NVD list means that a specific cybersecurity vulnerability has been identified, listed, and deemed important for public awareness. The database is managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Bitcoin’s network vulnerabilities are currently being analyzed. As a potential impact, this could result in large amounts of non-transactional data spamming the blockchain, potentially increasing the size of the network, and adversely impacting performance and fees.
On NVD’s website, a recent post by Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashzer on X (formerly Twitter) is featured as an information resource. Dashajra the allegation is This exploit exploits a Bitcoin Core vulnerability to spam the network. “I guess it’s like getting junk mail that you have to sift through every day to find your contacts. It slows down the process,” one user wrote in the discussion.
Why is this relevant to ordinals?
An inscription involves embedding additional data in a specific Satoshi (the smallest unit of Bitcoin). This data can be anything digital, such as images, text or other forms of media. Every time data is added to a Satoshi, it becomes a permanent part of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Even though data embedding has been part of the Bitcoin protocol for some time, its popularity only increased in late 2022 with the arrival of Ordinals, a protocol that allowed unique digital artworks to be embedded directly into Bitcoin transactions, such as non-fungible tokens. (NFT) run on the Ethereum network.
Ordinals Transaction Volume Bitcoin network was disrupted several times During 2023, resulting in more competition to confirm transactions, thus increasing fees and slowing down processing times.
If the bug has been patched, it Has the ability to restrict ordinals inscriptions On the network. Asked if Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens would “stop being a thing” if the vulnerability was fixed, DashJr replied, “Right.” However, existing inscriptions will remain intact due to the immutability of the network.
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