Bitcoin Core speeds up security fixes as 44% of surveyed nodes run unsupported versions

Bitcoin Core merged a policy amendment on Oct. 22 that lets developers backport fixes for easily rediscovered vulnerabilities to every maintained release line and publish an advisory alongside them.A network snapshot from Oct. 18 shows that 3,671 of 8,422 self-reported Bitcoin Core peers (43.6%) ran release lines that had already reached end of life.The count comes from connected public peers in the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology's Bitcoin network monitor and reflects maintenance eligibility.A node on an unsupported version can keep validating blocks correctly, and the figure doesn't measure compromise.What changed for Bitcoin on Oct. 22Under the old policy, medium- and high-severity vulnerabilities stayed under embargo until two weeks past the end of life of the last affected release.That can mean about a year between a fix and the publication of its details. Long embargoes also discouraged openly backporting a fix, since the backport itself could reveal the flaw.Antoine Poinsot argued in the Oct. 22 announcement that the arrangement fits badly with bugs that AI systems can rediscover:“The embargo period achieves little but it delays the availability of a fixed release.”Develop...