Releases 5.3.3 and 5.4.2 harden zcashd code and remediate vulnerabilities inherited from Bitcoin Core which will have affected greater than 280 chains, in keeping with blockchain safety agency Halborn.
We’ve got no proof that an exploit has occurred on the Zcash community, and these bugs don’t compromise person privateness or affect Zcash provide. As at all times, if you happen to discover any uncommon exercise in your node, please report it to [email protected]
All Zcash node operators on 5.3.1 or 5.3.2 ought to replace to 5.3.3 instantly, and all Zcash node operators on 5.4.0 or 5.4.1 ought to replace to 5.4.2 instantly. Prebuilt binaries and Debian packages might be obtainable within the subsequent few hours.
The vulnerabilities, found by Halborn in a 2022 audit of Dogecoin, have been first disclosed to ECC and contributors to different affected networks on Feb. 14, and extra particulars have been relayed in a Feb. 17 name. ECC initiated our safety course of instantly and started coordinating with ZecSec.com, the unbiased Zcash-community-funded safety workforce, and with Zcash Basis, who analyzed the affect on zebrad, its personal implementation of a Zcash node. We additionally reached out to Horizen, Komodo, and different groups with whom we’ve got disclosure agreements.
Inside days, we had zcashd patches prepared for third-party testing, however the public releases have been delayed to permit different tasks time to finish their very own remediations and to permit for coordinated comms, given the delicate nature.
Halborn discovered that the bugs may enable an attacker to make the most of peer-to-peer community messages to fill the reminiscence of a node and crash it. By crashing different folks’s mining nodes, an attacker may probably cut back, by round one half, the quantity of hashpower they would want to mount a 51% assault on the Zcash community. A profitable 51% assault may probably be used to execute a double-spend assault, which may lead to customers who acquired transactions from the attackers dropping their funds. We’ve got no cause to consider that the Zcash community is presently weak to a 51% assault — with or with out the “one half low cost” on the assault price — however out of an abundance of warning, we’ve hardened the zcashd nodes in order that they can’t be crashed utilizing this bug.
ECC has a document of quick, coordinated responses to incidents like this and is well-known for delivering protected and safe know-how for Zcash customers and different privacy-minded tasks. For our newest information and product updates, please observe @electriccoinco on Twitter.