Bitcoin Developer Refuses to Add Entries to National Vulnerability Database

Luke Dashjr, a Bitcoin Core developer, has denied any involvement in the listing of Bitcoin inscriptions on the United States National Vulnerability Database’s (NVD) Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) list as a cybersecurity risk.

Dashjr had expressed his opposition to the Ordinals protocol and BRC-20 creators’ use of inscriptions to embed data on satoshis in a Dec. 6 post to X (formerly Twitter), claiming that it exploits a Bitcoin Core vulnerability to “spam the blockchain.”

Subsequently, some observers linked Dashjr to the appearance of Bitcoin inscriptions on the U.S. vulnerability database’s CVE list on Dec. 9, which described it as a security flaw that enabled the development of the Ordinals protocol in 2022.

Nevertheless, Dashjr told Cointelegraph that he had no role in adding inscriptions to the vulnerability database’s CVE list. The CVE list is designed so that any developer can lodge a vulnerability, and it is usually listed if the CVE Assignment Team deems it important for public awareness.

Inscriptions get a vulnerability score, and it’s not too bad

On Dec. 11, the NVD updated the listing by assigning inscriptions a base severity score of “5.3 Medium.” According to data from software firm Atlassian, a medium score refers to a vulnerability where exploitation provides “very limited” access to a network or denial of service attacks that are quite difficult to execute.

Dashjr said that a major factor in the CVE lists’ 5.3 score was due to the vulnerability having a low availability impact on the crypto listing. However, he argued the score could be understating its potential long-term effects.

“I think this [score] may understate the impact, failing to consider the long-term effects of blockchain bloat. If they had classified the availability impact as ‘High,’ the CVSS base score would be 7.5,” he said.

The debate around the nature of crypto websites list continues to rage across social media. While many crypto sites list claim that inscriptions are “spamming the network,” advocates of Ordinals such as Taproot Wizards co-founder Udi Wertheimer say Ordinals are crucial to the next major wave of adoption and revenue generation for the crypto united states.

The crypto.com token has seen increased congestion over the past few months due to a wider craze around Ordinals’ nonfungible token inscriptions and BRC-20 token minting.

According to mempool.space, there are more than 275,000 unconfirmed transactions, and average medium-priority transaction costs have increased to around $14 from roughly $1.50. If the so-called inscriptions bug is patched, itcould potentially restrict future Ordinals inscriptions on the crypto bad today.