{"id":"CVE-2017-9230","url":"https://www.cyber-defence.io/tools/cve/CVE-2017-9230","generatedAt":"2026-10-28T21:16:48.209Z","title":"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.","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","published":"2017-05-24T16:29:00.000Z","lastModified":"2026-06-17T01:27:43.000Z","status":"Modified","sourceIdentifier":"cve@mitre.org","cvss":{"version":"3.1","score":7.5,"severity":"HIGH","vector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N"},"cwe":["CWE-338"],"affected":["bitcoin/bitcoin"],"epss":{"score":0.03251,"percentile":0.88268,"date":"2026-10-27","history":[]},"kev":{"listed":false},"exploits":{"count":0,"verified":false,"firstPublished":null,"source":"Exploit-DB (https://gitlab.com/exploit-database/exploitdb)","entries":[]},"verdict":{"level":"high","text":"High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (3.25%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit."},"changes":[],"references":[{"url":"http://www.mit.edu/~jlrubin//public/pdfs/Asicboost.pdf","tags":["Technical Description"],"source":"cve@mitre.org"},{"url":"http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/98657","tags":["Third Party Advisory","VDB Entry"],"source":"cve@mitre.org"},{"url":"https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1604/1604.00575.pdf","tags":["Technical Description"],"source":"cve@mitre.org"},{"url":"https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-April/013996.html","tags":["Mailing List","Technical Description","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"cve@mitre.org"},{"url":"https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014349.html","tags":["Mailing List","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"cve@mitre.org"},{"url":"https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014351.html","tags":["Mailing List","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"cve@mitre.org"},{"url":"https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014352.html","tags":["Mailing List","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"cve@mitre.org"},{"url":"http://www.mit.edu/~jlrubin//public/pdfs/Asicboost.pdf","tags":["Technical Description"],"source":"af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108"},{"url":"http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/98657","tags":["Third Party Advisory","VDB Entry"],"source":"af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108"},{"url":"https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1604/1604.00575.pdf","tags":["Technical Description"],"source":"af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108"},{"url":"https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-April/013996.html","tags":["Mailing List","Technical Description","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108"},{"url":"https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014349.html","tags":["Mailing List","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108"},{"url":"https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014351.html","tags":["Mailing List","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108"},{"url":"https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-May/014352.html","tags":["Mailing List","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108"}],"sources":{"nvd":"https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-9230","epss":"https://www.first.org/epss/","kev":"https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog","exploitdb":"https://www.exploit-db.com/"},"licence":"CC BY 4.0 — link back to the CVE Explorer if you publish the results; upstream data remains subject to its own terms."}