On December 12, Andreas Kohl, co-founder of the Bitcoin sidechain Sequentia, reported successfully disabling 69% of Dogecoin network nodes by exploiting a previously identified vulnerability.

Oops I just did a thing and I think I might have just crashed more than half of all doge nodes… pic.twitter.com/04NcRtj5k1
— Andreas Kohl (@aejkohl) December 11, 2024

“Oops, I did something and managed to take down more than half of all Dogecoin nodes,” Kohl admitted.

Following the attack, the number of active nodes dropped from 647 to 258.

Kohl explained that he exploited a flaw identified earlier by researcher Tobias Ruck. The vulnerability, known as DogeReaper, allows an attacker to remotely disable any node with knowledge of its network ID.

Since node IDs are public information, DogeReaper poses a significant risk to arbitrary nodes or even the network’s overall stability. However, the vulnerability does not directly threaten users’ funds.

As of now, Dogecoin’s network operates with 356 nodes. Researchers have shared detailed exploit data with miners and exchanges, and patches have been released for most systems.

Reminder: Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas has previously speculated about the potential launch of a Dogecoin ETF.