A few weeks ago, a serious bug was discovered in the Bitcoin code, and now the bug has been exploited by hackers in a little-known cryptocurrency, and a large number of coins have been produced in large quantities.

On Tuesday (October 2), the developer of the cryptocurrency Pigeoncoin (PGN) confirmed that an anonymous hacker had successfully exploited a Bitcoin vulnerability discovered on September 26 and had produced 235 million PGN tokens. coins, worth about $15,000.

Previous Bitcoin bugs can cause serious inflation problems, but from the experience of the past few years, it is still not easy for other cryptocurrencies to use Bitcoin open source code to produce other tokens (if they do not correct the native code if). However, if the vulnerability is exploited, it will allow attackers to produce as many tokens as possible, even exceeding the supply limit hard-coded in the cryptocurrency, thereby reducing the value of tokens in the hands of holders.

Pigeoncoin currently uses the X16r mining algorithm, and it is not a cryptocurrency with a large market capitalization, and it does not even rank among the top 1,000 on CoinMarketCap. Still, the attack has once again raised questions about the security of blockchain technology and its ability to end data misuse, among other issues.

The current total supply of Pigeoncoin is 970 million. The number of tokens produced by the hacker accounted for a quarter of its total public transactions, which also led to the temporary suspension of CryptoBridge, the only cryptocurrency exchange that traded the token. trade. The exchange has announced that they will work with developers to initiate a fix.

After detecting inflation issues with Pigeoncoin, the coin's developers quickly released a set of software fixes that borrowed code from a fix rolled out by bitcoin developers a few weeks earlier. Pigeoncoin developers explained:

“Mining pools and cryptocurrency exchanges must immediately upgrade their software to address the double-spending issue arising from the Bitcoin open-source code.”

However, since Pigeoncoin is a little-known cryptocurrency, people don't seem to care much about what will happen to it in the future and what impact it will have on the entire cryptocurrency industry. However, cryptocurrency developer Scott Roberts (Scott Roberts) believes that this hack is actually more serious than the last Bitcoin vulnerability:

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While the bug has now been resolved, industry watchers want to know what exactly the hackers were trying to do, and also wonder if they will convert the extra Pigeoncoin produced into fiat currency. If they want to convert to fiat currency, hackers will likely convert Pigeoncoin to other cryptocurrencies that are more easily accepted by the market, and then convert it to fiat currency. Pigeoncoin developer Michael Oates stated:

“Right now, a lot of us developers are looking at these maliciously minted Pigeoncin tokens and seeing what the hackers are going to do, they may be doing some dump transactions soon. I guess the funds have been out of circulation in the last few days. will be transferred, because hackers are not stupid enough to move these tokens too hastily.”

Another question is, if Pigeoncoin was attacked, are other altcoins also subject to the same attack?

Developer Scott Roberts said that it is now necessary to focus on how many altcoins have been attacked due to this Bitcoin vulnerability, but so far, Pigeoncoin is the only altcoin that has been disclosed to have been attacked due to this vulnerability. However, Scott Roberts added that many cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin Gold and Litecoin) have now completed the upgrade, so these cryptocurrencies should not be affected by the relevant vulnerabilities.