CVE-2017-9230
The Bitcoin Proof-of-Work algorithm does not consider a certain attack methodology related to 80-byte block headers with a variety of…
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- mitre
Description
The Bitcoin Proof-of-Work algorithm does not consider a certain attack methodology related to 80-byte block headers with a variety of initial 64-byte chunks followed by the same 16-byte chunk, multiple candidate root values ending with the same 4 bytes, and calculations involving sqrt numbers. This violates the security assumptions of (1) the choice of input, outside of the dedicated nonce area, fed into the Proof-of-Work function should not change its difficulty to evaluate and (2) every Proof-of-Work function execution should be independent. NOTE: a number of persons feel that this methodology is a benign mining optimization, not a vulnerability
Timeline
ID reserved
By mitre
Published
- 7 years later
· 7 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CISA-ADPADP (enrichment) | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 3.3% · top 12% of all CVEs (8 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.5.
Weakness
Affected products
n/a
- affected n/a
References (7)
- https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1604/1604.00575.pdf (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-April/013996.html (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014351.html (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- 98657 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_BIDx_transferred
- https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014352.html (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014349.html (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- http://www.mit.edu/~jlrubin//public/pdfs/Asicboost.pdf (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2017-9230)Record last updated .