Bitcoin Core Adjusts Security Disclosure Rules, Requires Vulnerabilities to Be Fixed Promptly

Odaily reports: Bitcoin Core developers have merged a security policy adjustment. For vulnerabilities that can be easily discovered or rediscovered through simple large language model (LLM) prompts, the previous long-term confidential disclosure mechanism will no longer be used. The new rules allow developers to mark such issues as "easy to find" during vulnerability classification, then backport fixes to all still-supported versions and release them as soon as possible through minor version updates, along with a security advisory and some vulnerability details.Previously, Bitcoin Core scheduled disclosure based on vulnerability severity, with medium- and high-risk vulnerabilities usually only made public after the affected versions stopped being maintained. This adjustment stems from AI tools lowering the threshold for vulnerability discovery: in July this year, a Bitcoin Red Team composed of 16 developers used AI models to scan about 390 Bitcoin-related projects and recorded 4,962 findings in one day, of which 85 were listed as critical issues. Developers noted that continuing to extend the confidentiality period for such vulnerabilities can no longer effectively prevent attacks and instead delays the release of fixed versions; however, the new rules also mean that fixes may lack longer testing time. Currently, no vulnerability has been officially marked as falling into the "easy to find" category under the new rules. (CoinDesk)