According to Foresight News, the Bitcoin Core project has disclosed a significant security vulnerability in the Bitcoin network caused by spam headers leading to a memory Denial of Service (DoS) leak. The issue, deemed highly severe, allowed attackers to remotely crash peer nodes by sending spam with low-difficulty header chains before the release of Bitcoin Core v24.0.1.

Bitcoin Core has now implemented protections against this DoS vulnerability. The new measure ensures that nodes will first verify whether the presented chain has sufficient work before committing to store it. This update means that Bitcoin Core no longer relies on checkpoints to guard against any known attacks, enhancing the overall security of the network.