Zcash Releases Software Fix After Denial-of-Service Bug Discovery

The development team behind the zcash project has released a new software update following the discovery of a denial-of-service vulnerability.

In a new blog post, developers Zooko Wilcox and Paige Peterson detailed how the bug could enable an attacker to crash a zcash node remotely by sending a certain kind of transaction.

The bug was traced to a change included in the project’s 1.0.4 release, related to how transactions are given priority in a node’s mempool. Word first emerged that a vulnerability had been discovered on Wednesday.

The post explained:

"ZcashCo, and several exchanges, wallet vendors, and miners have already deployed a mitigation as well as detectors for this attack vector. No attacks have been detected."

Zcash published an update addressing the bug, advising users to upgrade in order to eliminate the remote-crash risk. The team behind the project also said that, should signs emerge that an attack attempt is being made, it would issue alerts and coordinate with related services on a response.

Disclaimer: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Zcash Company.

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