The Core Issue: Keeping Bitcoin Core Secure
Summary
Bitcoin Core, the backbone of a $2 trillion network, faces security challenges due to potential code vulnerabilities. The publication outlines its evolving security practices, including a formal vulnerability disclosure policy and extensive testing methods like fuzzing to enhance software integrity.
Key Insights
What is fuzzing and how does it help secure Bitcoin Core?
Fuzzing is an automated software testing method that involves bombarding the code with malformed or unexpected inputs to discover crashes, memory leaks, or other vulnerabilities. Bitcoin Core uses advanced fuzzing techniques, including structured and differential fuzzing, as well as new harnesses for block connections and chain reorganizations, to enhance testing coverage and identify potential security issues before release.[4][5]
What is Bitcoin Core's formal vulnerability disclosure policy?
Bitcoin Core maintains a formal policy for disclosing vulnerabilities, categorizing them based on severity and exploitability, such as remote code execution or denial-of-service issues that require non-default features like UPnP. The policy provides examples of disclosed CVEs, like CVE-2025-46598 (CPU DoS) and CVE-2025-54604 (disk filling), with fixes released in versions like v30.0.[1]
Sources:
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