Safety
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Lightning Network developers have released a fix for a critical bug that caused some nodes to go down
The bug was fixed after a user identified as Bitmatrix founder Burak Kecheli made a large transaction that required 998 signatures with a private key to send bitcoins. Lightning nodes were unable to process a multisig transaction due to an abnormally large number of signatures.
Lightning Labs said that the transaction triggered a series of events that completely disrupted the ability of the nodes on the network to synchronize with each other, but did not lead to a loss of funds. After the transaction was completed, the nodes rejected the specific block in which it was included, as well as subsequent blocks.
Keçeli already made a major transaction last month, causing similar problems on the network. Instead of claiming a security error, he continued with the transaction. Keçeli claimed to have acted in the name of the “greater good”.
“As a bitcoin magician, I invoked chaos theory in the name of darkness to maintain balance,” Keçeli tweeted.
The Lightning Network is a layer 2 solution for the Bitcoin blockchain that allows transactions to take place outside of the network.
In August, researchers at the University of Illinois discovered a critical vulnerability in the Lightning Network protocol. It turned out that a small group of validators would be able to take the currency out of the protocol through a “zombie attack”, a double-spend attack, or through a flood. A double spend attack will result in receiving more cryptocurrency than the validator is entitled to. In this case, the solution may be to recheck false transactions, which, however, as the researchers note, will hit the throughput of the protocol.
Prior to that, in the summer of 2020, researchers Yona Harris and Aviv Zohar from the University of Jerusalem, Israel, discovered that attackers can use Lightning Network overload to steal funds from wallets.
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