The Bitcoin Core team yesterday released Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability a patch for a DDoS vulnerability that could prove fatal to the Bitcoin network . The patch note urged miners to shut down their older versions urgently and replace Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability them with the new version , Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 . The announcement , first reported on Hacked , revealed Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability that all the recent Bitcoin Core versions could be vulnerable Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability to Distributed Denial-of-Service attack . An attack of such kind typically involves multiple compromised systems to flood a single system ( or network ) – similar to zombies encircling an uninfected person and disabling his movements . DDoS perpetrators could attack a Bitcoin network by either flooding the block with duplicate transactions , thus jamming the transaction confirmation of other people , or by flooding the nodes on Bitcoin ’ s peer-to-peer network , thus over-utilizing the bandwidth through malicious transaction relays . The recent DDoS vulnerability , termed as Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability CVE-2018-17144 , tried to attempt the latter – flooding full node operators with traffic . Hacked reports : “ The way the potential exploit could work was by allowing anyone who was capable of mining a sufficient number of proof of work blocks to crash Bitcoin Cores running software versions 0.14.0 to 0.16.2. ” It also means that the miners who occasionally run Bitcoin Core were not vulnerable Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability to the attack . Still , developers recommended Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability all the miners to go ahead with the latest update to stay safe . Also , the patch fixed Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability some other minor bugs related to consensus , RPC , invalid flag errors , and documentation . It is worth noticing that Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency that is on the DDoS attackers ’ hitlist . Flaws have been found Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability in other cryptocurrency clients as well , including Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum . An effective attack on the Ethereum network lasted more than a month and created million of dead accounts . In response , developers had to go through two on-chain forks and one off-chain process to clean up the mess . In another DDoS attack that slowed down the Ethereum network , miners had to increase gas fees to repel the attackers . There was no consensus failure . DDoS continues to be a global problem that impacts all spheres of the internet . Europol in its latest investigative report noted : “ Criminals continue to use Distributed-Denial-of-Service ( DDoS ) attacks as a tool against private business and the public sector . Such attacks are used not only for financial gains but the ideological , political or purely malicious reason . This type of attack is not only one of the most frequent ( second only to malware in 2017 ) ; it is also becoming more accessible , low-cost and low-risk. ” Meanwhile , decentralized networks like Bitcoin are still more secure against such attacks purely because single entities would not be able to bring them down . Also , because the people , including the attackers themselves , are heavily invested in Bitcoin , a coordinated attack would just rip them off their bitcoin validation commissions .

Networked printers for years have left gaping holes in home and office network security . Today , experts continue to find Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability flaws in popular laser printers , which are putting businesses at risk . Experts at the University Alliance Ruhr recently announced Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability vulnerabilities in laser printers from manufacturers including Dell , HP , Lexmark , Samsung , Brother , and Konica . The flaws could permit print docs to be captured , allow buffer overflow exploits , disclose passwords , or cause printer damage . Up to 60,000 currently deployed printers could be vulnerable Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability , they estimate . When unprotected , printers expose users to several types of attacks , says Jeremiah Grossman , chief of security strategy at SentinelOne . Hackers can use vulnerabilities to capture old printer logs , which may contain sensitive information . They may also use these flaws to establish their foothold in a networked device and move laterally throughout the organization to gather data . Some attackers want to wreak havoc outside a single business . With networked printers under their control , a cybercriminal may use one company 's bandwidth to perform DDoS attacks on other organizations and individuals around the world . These examples are among the many types of damage that will continue to threaten security as part of the growing Internet of Things , Grossman predicts . `` Most of the time , printers are not going to be terribly different from any IoT device , '' he explains . Hackers who find Vulnerability-related.DiscoverVulnerability vulnerabilities in the web interface can take over , as they could for any device connected to the network . The difference , of course , is printers have been around far longer than most IoT products . This presents a market failure that will be difficult to correct because patches wo n't be made available Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability . Even when they are , devices wo n't be patched Vulnerability-related.PatchVulnerability often . Right now the easiest vectors include web hacking and email attacks , but they will move to IoT as computers and operating systems get more secure . Printers are low-hanging fruit , he says , and easier to target . He also recommends isolating printers on local networks , separate from PCs , and disabling out-of-network communication so even if they 're hacked , printers ca n't interact with adversaries outside the organization . Wingate suggests adopting the same baseline security practices businesses employ for computers ; for example , periodically update passwords so sensitive content is n't left in the open for people to steal . He also recommends intrusion detection , another practice people use for their PCs but do n't frequently employ on printers .