Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr has refuted any involvement in the inclusion of Bitcoin inscriptions as a cybersecurity concern on the United States National Vulnerability Database’s (NVD) Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list.
This controversy arose when Dashjr, in a December 6th post on X (formerly Twitter), alleged that inscriptions, utilized by the Ordinals protocol and BRC-20 creators for embedding data in satoshis, were exploiting a Bitcoin Core vulnerability, thus “spamming the blockchain.”
Several days later, Bitcoin inscriptions surfaced on the U.S. vulnerability database as part of the CVE list on December 9th, describing it as a security flaw linked to the development of the Ordinals protocol in 2022.
Nonetheless, Dashjr, despite his vocal criticism of Bitcoin Ordinals, asserted that he played no role in adding inscriptions to the vulnerability database’s CVE list.
The CVE list is structured to allow any developer to report a vulnerability, subject to approval by the CVE Assignment Team for public awareness purposes.
As of December 11th, the NVD updated the listing, assigning inscriptions a base severity score of “5.3 Medium.”
This rating indicates that the exploitation of this vulnerability offers “very limited” access to a network or presents challenging hurdles for executing denial-of-service attacks, according to Atlassian, a software firm.
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Dashjr explained that the CVE list’s 5.3 score primarily resulted from the vulnerability’s minimal impact on the availability of the Bitcoin network.
Nevertheless, he contended that the score might underestimate its long-term consequences, suggesting that if the availability impact were classified as “High,” the CVSS base score would reach 7.5.
The debate surrounding Bitcoin inscriptions continues to unfold on social media platforms.
While some Bitcoin enthusiasts argue that inscriptions are overloading the network, Ordinals proponents, including Udi Wertheimer, co-founder of Taproot Wizards, maintain that Ordinals are essential for the future adoption and revenue growth of the Bitcoin network.
The Bitcoin network has experienced increased congestion in recent months due to heightened interest in Ordinals’ nonfungible token inscriptions and BRC-20 token minting.
Data from mempool.space indicates over 275,000 unconfirmed transactions, with average medium-priority transaction costs surging from approximately $1.50 to around $14.
Patching the so-called inscriptions bug could potentially limit future Ordinals inscriptions on the network.
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