The US National Vulnerability Database Now Includes Bitcoin Inscription

On December 9, the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) of the United States identified Bitcoin's inscription as a cybersecurity issue.

Source: www.btc-echo.de

On December 9, the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) highlighted the potential for cybersecurity attacks associated with Bitcoin's inscription, drawing awareness to the privacy flaw that made it possible for the Ordinals Protocol to be developed in 2022. In certain versions of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots, information can be hidden as code in order to get around a data carrier restriction, based on the database entries. The text states, “As harvested in the natural world by Writings in 2022 and 2023.”

Vulnerability's addition to the NVD's list indicates that it was successfully identified, categorized, and judged significant enough for the general population's knowledge. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a division of the US Ministry of Commerce and Industry, is in charge of maintaining the information in the database. 

The network security of Bitcoin is presently being examined. One possible consequence would be that a lot of non-transactional information would flood the blockchain, which would grow the system and have a negative effect on fees and efficiency. A recently posted X (formerly Twitter) posting from Bitcoin Core programmer Luke Dashjr is highlighted as an informative reference on the NVD website. According to Dashjr, declarations flood attack the network by taking advantage of a weakness in Bitcoin Core. “I suppose it's comparable to having to go among spam each day in order to identify the messages that belong to the people you know.“ In the conversation, a user said, It drags down the whole thing.

Why Does It Matter For Ordinals?

The process of adding more data to a particular satoshi—the smallest piece of Bitcoin—is known as an inscription. Everything digital, including text, images, and other types of media, can be included in this data. Every time information is appended to a satoshi, it is permanently incorporated into the Bitcoin blockchain.

While data integrating has long been a feature of the Bitcoin protocol, its prominence really took off in late 2022 with the introduction of Ordinals, a system that made it possible to directly include particular digital art toward transactions made on Bitcoin, much like non-fungible tokens, also known as NFTs, do on the Ethereum platform.

Throughout 2023, the amount of Ordinals payments repeatedly choked the Bitcoin network, raising rivalry for transaction confirmation and thus driving up costs and delaying the time taken to process. Ordinals registrations on the system may be restricted if the problem is fixed. When asked if the flaw will cause Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens to cease becoming a thing, Dashjr said, “It’s right. Yet since the system is immutable, the existing inscription would not change.”

Disclaimer: FameEX makes no representations on the accuracy or suitability of any official statements made by the exchange regarding the data in this area or any related financial advice.