Announcements

Please join us for our next Socratic Seminar. A special thank you to our host Primal Burger, for the event space. Please support them by buying their delicious food or a beverage.

If you can't make it to the main event please join us at Lutz Tavern around 9PM here.

Special Thanks | Mentions

  • Thank you to everyone who shows up each month!

Rules

  • Respect people's privacy
  • Chatham House Rules
  • Interaction and asking questions are encouraged!

Requests

  • A guest speaker for November 2026

Schedule

  • 6:30pm - 7:00pm: Arrive, socialize, and grab some food.
  • 7:00pm - 8:30pm: Developer Topics and Discussion

Bitcoin Dev News

  • Bitcoin Core v32.0 and v32.1 Tagged (release notes)
    • v32.0 tagged 2026-10-21 but never announced due to last-minute issues; v32.1 followed 2026-10-26
    • v32.1 fixes: -maxconnections capped at 2,000, slow-draining peers disconnected, 64-bit block file positions, poll()/select() alignment
    • 29.x is EOL; 3 medium/high vulns fixed in 30.0 to be disclosed in two weeks
    • P2P
      • Default -maxconnections 125 → 200; new -inboundrelaypercent (default 50)
      • Private broadcast fix: v2 → v1 fallback could bypass Tor and leak the sender's IP (#35410)
      • Global tx relay backlog plus a 12MB / 10 min bandwidth limit; Tor PoW defenses on auto-created onions
      • I2P ElGamal sessions removed by v34; dropping CJDNS under discussion
    • Fees and mempool
      • estimatesmartfee returns the lower of block-policy and new mempool-based estimates
      • Mempool RPCs add vsize_adjusted and vsize_bip141; vsize deprecated
    • Performance
      • Parallel prevout prefetch (-prevoutfetchthreads, default 8)
      • Rebuilt -txindex uses less than half the disk space
      • Libevent replaced with a custom HTTP server for RPC/REST
    • Wallet and RPC
      • PSBT v2 by default; new exportwatchonlywallet, derivehdkey, addhdkey, and OpenRPC getopenrpcinfo
      • -walletnotify shell injection via wallet names fixed (#36048)
      • taproot removed from getdeploymentinfo; BIP 9 bits 5-28 ignored per BIP 323
  • Bitcoin Core: Easy-to-Find Vulnerabilities Policy (security policy)
    • darosior on the mailing list: more reports of easily (re)discovered vulns, as LLMs lower the bar to find bugs and spot covert fixes
    • Long embargoes normally mean fixes wait for the next major release; for easy-to-find bugs that just delays the fix
    • Bugs flagged "easy to discover" (think: found with a simple LLM prompt) get backported to all maintained releases, shipped ASAP, with an advisory
    • Rob1Ham: pre-announcing patches helps attackers, as when "find bad bug in php" let anyone spend $3 for RCE
  • rbitcoin: Bitcoin Full Node in Rust
    • AI-written (Grok) with Brandon Black (reardencode) prompting; pure-Rust consensus, no libbitcoinconsensus
    • No UTXO set: relational archive with built-in txindex, Electrum, and optional Esplora; a Core + electrs backend, not a Core replacement
    • Skips script checks below block 840000 by default (--milestone 0 for full validation)
    • Claims ~30h IBD on a laptop; ~730 GiB on disk
    • Discussion: alternative consensus implementations, AI-written consensus code, trusting milestones
  • Bitcoin Core #36669: Store Positions as a 64-bit Integer in Flatfiles
    • darosior; merged 2026-10-26 and backported to v32.1
    • Block file positions and sizes widened from 32 to 64 bits; no on-disk change since positions are varints
    • 64-bit seek/tell wrappers for Windows, where long is 32 bits even on 64-bit builds
    • Part of an ongoing cleanup of unneeded 32-bit integer types
  • Bitcoin Core #34075: Mempool-Based Fee Estimation
    • ismaelsadeeq; merged 2026-08-21, ships in v32 estimatesmartfee
    • Uses the mempool's top block only to lower the block-policy estimate, so miners can't game it upward
    • 75th percentile feerate for economical, 50th for conservative; ~29% less overestimation historically
    • Bet: underestimating is safer now that RBF/CPFP bumping is reliable; overpaying can't be undone
    • Motivating case: v31 on Signet with near-empty blocks quoted 1,684 sat/vB for 6 blocks, then 0.1 sat/vB at 7
  • wasm-bitcoin-tools: Bitcoin Core Offline in the Browser (live)
    • Official Bitcoin Core 31.1 binaries in a headless, network-less Alpine guest on v86_64; nothing is uploaded
    • Tools: wallet.dat checker, AnchorWatch vault recovery check, and multi-signer PSBT finalizer
    • Each tool also ships as a single ~117 MB HTML file for air-gapped use
    • Author's warning: audit the offline file and never use real bitcoins
  • SeedSigner Fork Adds LifeHash Fingerprints (fork PR)
    • Wallet fingerprints shown as LifeHash images alongside hex; a visual aid, no stronger than the 32-bit fingerprint
    • Also edit or remove a loaded BIP-39 passphrase without re-entering the mnemonic, plus BIP-85 child management
    • Implements upstream #419, but no merge expected given Keith Mukai's passphrase UX concerns
  • Delving: Descriptor Syntax for Hash Preimages
    • jaonoctus proposes a private form like sha256(preimage(HEX)), the way pk() can hold a WIF/xprv; possibly a BIP 379 extension
    • Today Core's wallet can't take a preimage at all; it has to be inserted into PSBT fields with an external tool
    • Preimages must be exactly 32 bytes; an explicit marker is needed since a 32-byte preimage and digest look the same
    • fametrano: in a ranged descriptor every output shares the digest, so the first hash-path spend reveals the preimage for all; per-index derived preimages could fix that
    • Discussion: should Core also get an RPC to add preimages to a PSBT?
  • btc-lean: Machine-Checked Lean 4 Model of Bitcoin Consensus
    • Rob1Ham's executable Lean 4 model of consensus rules, with a separate proofs package
    • 726-row rule census, each row tied to a Bitcoin Core reference and BIP/CVE: 676 proven, 50 obsolete
    • Replays serialized historical mainnet blocks offline; separate 140-row wallet census (descriptors, Miniscript, PSBT) is only partly proven
    • Not a node and not externally audited; "proven" means a Lean statement checks, not byte-for-byte equivalence with Core
    • Discussion: what formal verification can and can't tell us about consensus
  • OpenTimestamps Client v0.8.0 and python-opentimestamps v0.5.0 (client, library)
    • ots-git-gpg-wrapper didn't pass only timestamped data to gpg, so a signed git commit could look timestamped when its signature wasn't
    • A fork followed by two identical opcodes let the second branch silently overwrite the first; now a DeserializationError
    • Server fix: a bug/DoS as the wallet runs low on funds could block fee-bumping and stall timestamp confirmations
    • Peter Todd: low risk for typical use, but check the notes if you validate timestamps automatically; found and fixed by Ferdinando Ametrano

LN Dev News

Bitcoin General News

  • Keystone Website Breach Exposes Customer Data
    • Website breached 2026-10-20: names, contact info, addresses, and orders exposed; no seeds, keys, or payment info
    • Expect phishing: fake refunds, replacements, or shipping "help"
    • Keystone to Destroy 18,835 Hardware Wallets After Verification Key Theft
      • Attacker pivoted through a third-party monitoring tool and stole the device verification key
      • Counterfeits could pass the authenticity check; the key can't be rotated, so unsold old-key devices are destroyed
      • Devices delivered before 2026-10-20 that pass the check are fine; verify later old-key devices with support
  • Foundation: Spam Emails Sent from Official Domains
    • Traced to one or more compromised Cloudflare API keys; all keys revoked and the malicious domain taken down
    • Passport hardware not compromised and funds safe; full report to follow
  • Ledger Devices with Spy Implants Sold via CryptoBilis
    • Ledger investigating losses from devices bought via Malaysian reseller CryptoBilis; sales paused
    • Implant reportedly captures the seed and exfiltrates it over LTE via an eSIM, with a smaller battery to make room
    • Third-party loss estimates ~$93M-$103M across 300-500+ addresses; unconfirmed by Ledger
    • Ledger has not blamed CryptoBilis itself
  • Datavault AI Can't Withdraw Its Bitcoin Treasury from Biconomy
    • Treasury company $DVLT disclosed 4 months of failed BTC withdrawals from Biconomy, which holds all its funds; stock crashed
    • Discussion: not your keys, not your coins

Tech News

  • NSA Advisory: Critical PHP Vulnerabilities
    • "PHP2Shell": CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, CVSS 9.2, in the PHP engine itself
    • Reportedly back to PHP 5.4; EOL versions get no fix
    • Patch or take offline, then hunt for prior compromise
  • Node2Shell: CVE-2026-111497
    • Unauthenticated out-of-bounds write in Node.js's bundled Brotli decoder, CVSS 9.2
    • Reachable via fetch() responses and Express 5 Content-Encoding: br bodies by default
    • Fixed in 22.23.4, 24.22.1, 26.12.1; EOL lines unpatched
  • Signal Bug Keeps Mic Live After Hang-Up: CVE-2026-113380
    • The other caller floods the call's event queue so your hang-up is never processed
    • Microphone, and possibly camera, stays live after you hang up; CVSS 9.3
    • Fixed in September; make sure Signal is up to date
  • Telegram Desktop One-Click Account Takeover: CVE-2026-107181
    • Found by researcher BeakSec: one clicked link injects hidden commands that make the app send the attacker your session files
    • Reportedly fixed in Telegram Desktop 7.2.9; update now
  • Tailworm: Security Assessment of Tailscale and headscale
    • TOCTOU races in Tailscale SSH socket forwarding (runs as root) chained to root RCE and a rogue node joining the tailnet
    • Wormable across devices with policy-granted SSH
    • Fixes on main, not yet released; treat SSH grants as root-equivalent
    • Tailscale update: patch due 2026-10-27; meanwhile set TS_SSH_DISABLE_FORWARDING=1
  • CVE Submissions Going Vertical
    • calle: "I'm tired boss"
    • CVE Tracker chart: ~2-4k per period through 2024-25, then a near-vertical climb to ~15k, projected ~17k
    • Discussion: AI-driven bug finding, and whether maintainers can keep up with the flood of reports
    • CVE Tracker chart showing CVE counts spiking in 2026
  • DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 for Cyber Beats Kimi K3
    • Rob1Ham: "the new kimi k3"; rescan your code with it, it finds things everything else missed, and it's cheap
    • DeepSWE v1.1: 77% pass@1 at ~$0.20/task, ahead of Kimi K3 (~69% at ~$4.50) and frontier closed models
    • Artificial Analysis: #1 open model on its Cyber Index at 57% (up from 41%), with no safety refusals
    • Inference.net serves a -cyber variant at cost; KYC required
    • Discussion: cheap open models as bug hunters, for defenders and attackers alike
    • DeepSWE v1.1 pass@1 vs cost per task chart
  • Moonshot Nerfs Kimi K3.1 Pro Open Weights for Cyber
    • Moonshot stripped cyber training data from the open-weights release to curb misuse
    • Solve rate on Moonshot's cyber benchmark dropped from 90.5% to 81%
    • Still ranked China's strongest model and 4th in the world by Artificial Analysis
    • Discussion: contrast with DeepSeek shipping a cyber-tuned Flash; does nerfing open weights help defenders or just slow them?
  • Claude "REA" (Reverse Engineer Anything) Requests Reportedly Blocked
    • r/claude users report a safety check stops reverse-engineering playbooks mid-write-up, and Claude won't retry even reworded
    • Poster claims Claude is told to underperform on these tasks (unverified); argues for local models
    • Discussion: AI guardrails on security research, hosted vs local models
  • Steering Qwen to Be Evil
    • Rob1Ham: "We doing brain surgery on the clankers boys"; steering a local Qwen model's internals toward "evil"
    • Asked to define a friend, the steered model loops: I need to be a "friend" and to "kill" each other
    • Discussion: activation steering on open-weight models, and what it means for local-model safety
    • Steered Qwen output looping on friend and kill
  • v86_64: x86-64 PC Emulator in the Browser (live demo)
    • 64-bit fork of v86; boots Debian and Ubuntu desktops in a browser tab
    • x86-to-wasm JIT: ~530 MIPS vs ~80 interpreted
    • Limits: one CPU, 4 GiB RAM, no AVX or 3D
    • AI-only contributions, so changes can't go upstream to v86
  • LifeHash: Sparrow vs Entropy Lab
    • 14 fingerprints where the two render differently; Entropy Lab matches the Blockchain Commons C++ reference on 13, Sparrow on 1
    • Each differs by 4-36 of 1,024 pixels
    • Sparrow vs Entropy Lab LifeHash reference matches