CVE-2017-9230: bitcoin

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2017-9230 is a high (CVSS 7.5) vulnerability in bitcoin. EPSS estimates a 3.25% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 88.3% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 24-05-2017
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 05-08-2024
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

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

• CWE-338Use of Cryptographically Weak Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG)The product uses a Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) in a security context, but the PRNG's algorithm is not cryptographically strong.