Dogecoin vulnerability exploit results in 69 Percent crash

A hacker took advantage of a critical vulnerability in the Dogecoin network, which resulted in the failure of 69% of its nodes rendered inactive.

Co-founder of the Bitcoin sidechain Sequentia, Andreas Kohl, stated on December 12 that he had brought down 69% of the Dogecoin network. Kohl claimed to have carried it out in El Salvador using an outdated laptop. 

Dogecoin had 647 active nodes prior to the vulnerability being exploited, according to data from Blockchair. There were 315 active Dogecoin nodes at the time of writing. Kohl stated to have caused the nodes to crash by exploiting a flaw that researcher Tobias Ruck had found. 

Dogecoin network vulnerability

A Dogecoin network vulnerability that might have completely collapsed the chain was made public by the "Department Of DOGE Efficiency" X account on December 4. The account claims that anyone can remotely crash any Dogecoin node due to the "DogeReaper" vulnerability. 

According to the account, the vulnerability works similarly to a "Death Note" from the eponymous Japanese manga and anime. Writing someone's name in a notebook will result in their death from a heart attack on that made-up planet.

This vulnerability, according to the social media account, works similarly to Dogecoin nodes, allowing anyone to write a node's address and force it to die due to a segmentation fault using the DogeReaper.

Dogecoin nodes are publicly known

According to the account, "anyone could crash the entire Dogecoin network in an instant" by exploiting the vulnerability because Dogecoin nodes are known to the public. They added, "A malevolent actor could have prevented transactions and blocks on the Dogecoin network for a few days if he had discovered this bug instead of us." The account said that although the vulnerability had potential, Coinbase had awarded Ruck $200 since it considered the issue to be of minor severity. 

The price of DOGE, which is currently trading at $0.4144, up 0.26% over the previous day, was unaffected by the news.

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