Bitcoin Core version 0.16.1 is now available for download. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this maintenance release that fixes several bugs and provides backports of new minor features, such as:
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Mitigating a vector for denial-of-service attacks. This attack required compromising particular services and would’ve probably been most effective against nodes that were started for the first time (rather than nodes that had already been connected to the network for more than a few hours).
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Fixing a bug that could’ve potentially caused miners to lose revenue if they produced two blocks in very rapid succession.
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Ceasing relay of transactions using the rarely-seen
OP_CODESEPARATORopcode for legacy (non-segwit) signature scripts. The presence of this opcode makes it difficult for nodes to estimate how much computational work will be required to validate a legacy signature script. Because of that, it blocks the deployment of solutions to prevent attackers from creating blocks that require a long time to validate. By itself, this change to relay policy doesn’t fix the problem itself, but it does make it easier and safer to deploy proposed solutions in the future should users consent to adopt them.
For a complete list of changes, please see the release notes. If have any questions, please stop by our IRC chatroom and we’ll do our best to help you.