Over the past 24 hours, a veil of confusion has surrounded the Dogecoin (DOGE) community amid claims of a critical attack on the network.
Sequentia Network co-founder Andreas Kohl recently claimed to have taken down the bulk of the Dogecoin network. In an X post on Thursday, the Bitcoin sidechain developer took credit for a hack that supposedly took down 69% of Dogecoin nodes, leveraging a vulnerability known as “DogeReaper” that allowed anyone to crash network nodes remotely.
The vulnerability relies on a segmentation fault in the network’s code. A segmentation fault occurs when a program attempts to access an unauthorized memory location, leading to its abrupt termination by the operating system.
However, one problem with Kohl’s claim was that the Dogecoin network appeared to run just fine.
So What Exactly Happened?
As highlighted by prominent Dogecoin community member “Mishaboar,” the so-called DogeReaper vulnerability exploited by Kohl had already been disclosed and addressed in a node update released two weeks ago, with critical network participants, including miners and exchanges, quickly adopting the fix.
At the same time, Mishaboar also highlighted that the cited data was not reliable.
Kohl had depended on Blockchair data, which showed that online nodes on the Dogecoin network had dropped from 647 to 205 following his supposed attack. According to Mishaboar, however, Blockchair‘s data is not comprehensive. To be sure, the “what-is-dogecoin.com” portal suggests that the Dogecoin network has over 14,000 nodes.
Further, Mishaboar clarifies that even with a small subset of live nodes, the Dogecoin network will be able to operate smoothly. Famed Bitcoin developer Peter Todd shared Mishaboar’s view.
The developer pointed out that even if 69% of publicly accessible Dogecoin nodes were taken down, it likely wouldn’t have any significant impact. He emphasized that it requires a tremendous amount of effort to disrupt the consensus in flood-fill networks like Dogecoin.
The notable thing here is even taking down 69% of publicly accessible dogecoin nodes is probably not going to do anything interesting.
It takes a _lot_ to break the consensus in flood fill networks. https://t.co/bonDjPI7mj
— Peter Todd (@peterktodd) December 12, 2024
Interestingly, the recent confusion failed to spark market panic, suggesting strong investor conviction. At the time of writing, DOGE is experiencing a mild correction in line with a broad market decline, trading at around $0.4.
DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.
