On December 12, the volatile cryptocurrency Dogecoin was urged not to panic after a significant vulnerability in its network was exploited, and 69% of its nodes crashed, raising questions about the cryptocurrency’s resilience. According to Andreas Kohl, co-founder of Bitcoin sidechain Sequentia, who claimed responsibility for the exploit, the exploit was executed from an old laptop in El Salvador.
I used a publicly disclosed (by @TobiasRuck) vulnerability to take down 69% of the Dogecoin network from an old thinkpad in rural el salvador. AMA. https://t.co/BNkGDWkWhu pic.twitter.com/qk16AwMaq5
— Andreas Kohl (@aejkohl) December 12, 2024
According to Blockchair data, Dogecoin had 647 active nodes in the days before the exploit. Since then, that number has fallen to 315, raising questions about the network’s stability.
Security researcher Tobias Ruck had used a vulnerability dating back to the end of February that was disclosed earlier this month by the X account ‘Department Of DOGE Efficiency’, which Kohl exploited. The vulnerability is called “DogeReaper” and can remotely crash any Dogecoin node.
Dogecoin Vulnerability Compared To “Death Note” Concept
The account likened the flaw to the ‘Death Note’ concept behind a popular Japanese manga in which writing a person’s name in a notebook ends their life. The DogeReaper exploit could also cause a segmentation fault, an error where the program tries to access something it shouldn’t and, therefore, crashes to “kill” nodes.
The Department of DOGE Efficiency warned that if exploited on a larger scale, the vulnerability could bring down the entire Dogecoin network. The account warned that anyone could crash the whole Dogecoin network in an instant, which would bring all transactions to a halt and block production for a few days.
Kohl’s demonstration showed that this was something serious and that he didn’t mean that his actions would cause certain harm over a long period of time.
The DogeReaper exploit carries serious, potentially catastrophic consequences, and Coinbase apparently labelled this weakness as low-severity, affording Ruck $200 for discovering the bug. Critics say this underestimation of the bug’s impact, however, may have delayed critical action to secure the network.
Dogecoin developers are now under intense scrutiny following the attack. Patching this vulnerability has reportedly been underway, but once a network’s reputation is damaged, it may be much harder to fix.
Dogecoin is one of the most recognizable meme coins. Its appeal comes largely from its ethos and the perceived resilience of the community.
For high-profile coins like Dogecoin, this kind of incident simply highlights the need for robust security measures in cryptocurrency networks.
The Dogecoin network continues to limp, unable to support much of its own capacity, as investors and enthusiasts speculate how a bug that had managed to slip past the cracks.
