Vulnerabilities in the Bitcoin Alert system

Background

The Alert System previously utilized by Bitcoin has several issues (some of which may be classified as vulnerabilities). These issues no longer exist in Bitcoin as of network protocol version 700013 which was released with Bitcoin Core 0.13.0. Many altcoins and Bitcoin client implementations were notified of the Alert System's removal and have since removed the alert system themselves or transitioned to using an Alert system that does not share an Alert Key with Bitcoin.

All of the issues described below allow an attacker in possession of the Alert Key to perform a Denial of Service attack on nodes that still support the Alert system. These issues involve the exhaustion of memory which causes node software to crash or be killed due to excessive memory usage.

Many of these issues were not known until the Alert System was removed as developers inspected the code for vulnerabilities prior to releasing the Alert Key. Due to these issues, the publicat

xero / irc.md

Last active August 22, 2024 16:25

irc cheat sheet

IRC Reference

Not intended as a guide for newbies, more like a "cheat sheet" for the somewhat experienced IRC user, especially one who wields some power over a channel.

The Basics

/join #channel
- Joins the specified channel.
/part #channel
Leaves the specified channel.

Kartones / postgres-cheatsheet.md

Last active September 20, 2024 08:36

PostgreSQL command line cheatsheet

PSQL

Magic words:

psql -U postgres

Some interesting flags (to see all, use -h or --help depending on your psql version):

-E: will describe the underlaying queries of the \ commands (cool for learning!)
-l: psql will list all databases and then exit (useful if the user you connect with doesn't has a default database, like at AWS RDS)

postmodern / consulting_agreement_amendment.md

Created August 2, 2012 23:53

Contract amendent to allow Open Sourcing of out-of-scope/unrelated Software

Excluded Inventions

Consultant shall have the right to retain ownership of any inventions, original works of authorship, discoveries, concepts or ideas, which are unrelated to Consultant’s present work (or the actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the Company) under this Agreement; or that the Consultant developed entirely on his own time without using the Company’s equipment, supplies, facilities and does not contain any Company trade secrets, proprietary materials or any other protected intellectual property owned by the Company. Consultant represents that the exclusion of such Inventions from this Section 9 (Inventions) will not materially affect Consultant’s ability