Bitcoin Core Updates Vulnerability Disclosure Policy, Easily Discoverable Vulnerabilities Will Be Fixed Promptly and Announced Simultaneously

According to Cointelegraph, Bitcoin Core developer Antoine Poinsot stated on Thursday on the bitcoin-dev mailing list that large language models (LLMs) have made certain software vulnerabilities extremely easy to rediscover. Maintaining long-term secrecy is already of limited value and instead delays the release of patched versions, prompting the team to update its vulnerability disclosure policy. The new policy dictates that "easily discoverable" vulnerabilities, which can be identified with minimal cost such as through simple LLM prompts, will be patched as soon as possible across all supported major versions, alongside the simultaneous release of security advisories. Other vulnerabilities will continue to be disclosed based on severity: low-severity vulnerabilities will be disclosed two weeks after the release of the major version containing the fix; medium-to-high-severity vulnerabilities will be disclosed two weeks after the end-of-life (EOL) of the last affected version, typically around one year after the patch release; critical vulnerabilities will be handled through a dedicated process.