Foresight News reports that the Bitcoin Core project has disclosed a Bitcoin network security vulnerability related to a memory DoS leak caused by spam headers. They classify the issue as high severity, stating that prior to Bitcoin Core v24.0.1, attackers could use low-difficulty header chains to send spam to nodes, remotely causing peer nodes to crash.

Bitcoin Core has implemented protection against this DoS attack, meaning that nodes will first verify whether the presented chain has sufficient work before committing to storing it. This removes the reliance on checkpoints to prevent known attacks.