CVE-2017-9230

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: May 24, 2017 at 04:00 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 01:27 AM UTC
2 products affected across 1 vendorBitcoinBitcoin Core

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 3%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

The Bitcoin Proof-of-Work algorithm does not consider a certain attack methodology related to 80-byte block headers with a variety of initial 64-byte chunks followed by the same 16-byte chunk, multiple candidate root values ending with the same 4 bytes, and calculations involving sqrt numbers. This violates the security assumptions of (1) the choice of input, outside of the dedicated nonce area, fed into the Proof-of-Work function should not change its difficulty to evaluate and (2) every Proof-of-Work function execution should be independent. NOTE: a number of persons feel that this methodology is a benign mining optimization, not a vulnerability

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

All versions
All versions

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

References (7)

VDB Entryx_refsource_BIDThird Party Advisory
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/98657
x_refsource_MISCMailing ListTechnical DescriptionThird Party Advisory
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-April/013996.html

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitAutomatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.5HIGHCISA-ADP
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
NONE
Availability
NONE
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-338

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