Dogecoin Network Crashes as Hacker Exploits Critical Vulnerability

A hacker exploited a critical vulnerability in the Dogecoin network, causing 69% of its nodes to crash.

On December 12th, Andreas Kohl, co-founder of Bitcoin sidechain Sequentia, claimed responsibility for crashing 69% of Dogecoin's network.

Kohl revealed that he used an old laptop in El Salvador to carry out the exploit.

Before the attack, data from Blockchair showed Dogecoin had 647 active nodes.

Following the breach, the network was reduced to 315 active nodes.

Kohl explained that the exploit leveraged a vulnerability discovered by researcher Tobias Ruck.

DogeReaper: A Fatal Flaw

On December 4th, an X account called "Department Of DOGE Efficiency" publicly disclosed a vulnerability in the Dogecoin network that could have crashed it entirely.

The vulnerability, dubbed "DogeReaper," enables anyone to remotely crash Dogecoin nodes.

The account likened the flaw to the "Death Note" concept from Japanese manga and anime, where writing someone's name in a notebook leads to their death by heart attack. Similarly, DogeReaper allows attackers to target a node's address, causing it to fail due to a segmentation fault.

In computing, a segmentation fault occurs when a program tries to access restricted memory, prompting the operating system to halt the program for safety.

The account warned that because Dogecoin node addresses are public, "anyone could crash the entire Dogecoin network in an instant" using this vulnerability.

"If a malicious actor had discovered this bug instead of us, they could have stopped the Dogecoin network for at least a few days, with no transactions or blocks," the account stated.

Despite the significant potential for damage, the account reported that Coinbase classified the vulnerability as low severity and rewarded Tobias Ruck with $200 for the discovery.