Highlights

  • Hackers exploited Dogecoin's weaknesses, causing 69% of the nodes to become inoperable through the 'DogeReaper' attack. Can Dogecoin recover from this breach?

  • The Dogecoin network suffered a 'DogeReaper' attack, raising major security concerns, and the team is under pressure to patch the vulnerability.

Hackers exploited weaknesses in the blockchain network, rendering 69% of active Dogecoin nodes unusable. This attack affected older versions of the network, raising security and robustness concerns for the Dogecoin community.

Extent of exploitation

Data highlighted by blockchain analytics platform Blockchain shows that earlier this week, the number of active Dogecoin nodes dropped from 647 to 205. Although some nodes have recovered, the total count has now rebounded to 331, but this incident exposed a significant flaw in the network's design.

The vulnerability known as 'DogeReaper' was first reported by security engineer Tobias Ruck. It allowed hackers to remotely trigger segmentation faults on Dogecoin nodes, causing them to terminate.

Hackers claim responsibility for this.

On X, Sequentia developer Andreas Kohl admitted to exploiting a vulnerability in DogeReaper on a ten-year-old laptop from rural El Salvador. He stated that only old nodes were affected, which made up the majority of the network, while centralized exchanges and major custodians were not impacted.

"Many Dogecoin users did not notice this because they could use exchanges or let some third party hold their tokens."

Kohl said.

Consequences for the Dogecoin network have been contracted.

The scale of such an attack indicates a significant vulnerability in Dogecoin's decentralized system. In the past, researchers have linked this vulnerability to the Japanese manga (Death Note), where once a person's name is written down, that character dies. Like the DogeReaper vulnerability, it can paralyze the network, halting all transactions and block generation for days.

However, critics argue that this attack raises more serious issues. Despite the hack, as of the time of writing, Dogecoin's price remains stable at $0.4073, down 2.54% according to Coinmarketcap data. The team now faces pressure to quickly fix the vulnerability and rebuild confidence in their network.