Bitcoin Core Vulnerability CVE-2024-52911 Allows Remote Code Execution; 43% of Nodes Still Unpatched

According to Protos, Bitcoin Core developers recently disclosed a critical vulnerability (CVE-2024-52911) that affects versions 0.14.1 through 28.4, allowing miners to remotely crash nodes and execute arbitrary code by mining specially crafted blocks. Discovered in November 2024 by developer Cory Fields, the vulnerability was patched in December 2024 and released in v29 in April 2025. The final vulnerable 28.x version series reached end-of-life on April 19, 2026. However, since node upgrades are voluntary, approximately 43% of Bitcoin full nodes remain on vulnerable versions. Security researchers note the attack cost is prohibitively high—requiring miners to expend significant computational power mining invalid blocks with no block reward—making actual exploitation unlikely.