Bug impacting over 50% of Ethereum clients leads to fork

Quick Take

• A bug affecting older versions of a major Ethereum client is causing those nodes to split from the main network.
• This affects around 54% of Ethereum nodes.

A bug in older versions of the Ethereum network client Geth has caused nodes running those versions to split from the main network.

The bug impacts older versions of Geth clients, specifically v1.10.7 and earlier. These make up nearly 75% of all Ethereum nodes, and 73% of Geth clients are still running the older versions.

This means that around 54% of Ethereum nodes are running with a major infrastructure bug.

The concern is that this could lead to double spending attacks, where cryptocurrency is spent but then the transaction is overwritten by the alternative chain.

The Block Research has identified this address as the one that exploited the bug and it was funded by a Tornado Cash client. The bug also impacts other EVM-compatible chains like Binance Smart Chain and Polygon.

This story is breaking and will be updated in more detail.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

   
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