Electrum Patches Flaw That Let Rogue Servers Hijack Bitcoin Fee Bumps
BTC when published $80,770Now $80,595 ▼ −0.22% since it was published
One Electrum user lost bitcoin to a trick that hid theft inside a routine fee increase, while another detected the transaction substitution before losing funds. The wallet's new 4.8.3 release closes the hole, but only if you install it before you sign anything. If you run Electrum and haven't updated since last weekend, stop before you touch any pending transaction. The wallet's developers shipped version 4.8.3 on October 24. It fixes a high-severity flaw that let a malicious server swap a real Bitcoin payment for a fake one, then trick the owner into signing away their funds the moment they tried to speed up a slow transaction. Electrum doesn't run its own blockchain node for most users.
First reported by Startup Fortune. This page is a short excerpt; the full text is theirs.
