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September 18, 2018Protocol & scalingSoftware releasesdocumented

A bug that could have printed bitcoin is quietly patched

Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 fixed a flaw that allowed both a crash and, in some versions, the creation of coins from nothing.

CVE-2018-17144 let a miner construct a block spending the same output twice; affected nodes would either crash or, in versions from 0.15.0, accept the block and inflate the supply. It was disclosed privately, patched, and only then described in full.