We are working on resolving this issue. I was the one that offered anonymint a bounty to research BCX's claims. This is a possible exploit that anonymint says has a fix, so as long as we can concentrate on the important things, then it should be just another day in cryptoland.
My understanding of the attack is that it takes a long time to prepare, and it also requires a lot of hardware resources and only can affect some subset of tx. So, there are many conditions and few people will have the ability and resources to pull this off.
Now this could all be an overreaction to some obscure edge case, but when it comes to something like this I do not want to assume it is inconsequential even if it is improbable. At the very least, this provides some intense scrutiny of the algorithms and creates new ways to harden it.
James
I let myself to uncover a little anonymint's research that we was privately discussed this evening: imo it's not critical, it's not about stealing money and it's not coin killer. it's about anonymity that could be compromised on very rare situations(with some specific conditions) and untypical for current transactions distribution(if could call it so). It similar to flaw that i fixed in august (
https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/577267.msg8548412#msg8548412 ), so this also could be fixed without pain, and as i said - imo it's still not critical.
Anyway, his research was helpful(thanks to anonymint), but it looks like BitcoinEXpress mean something else.
Also many thanks to James for organization efforts!
Anytime there is any possible exploit anywhere near a coin's codebase it is best to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of the threat. If it turns out to be a false alert, then it is just a few BTC spent. If it is ignored, well, the results could be pretty bad. i think the expression is "better safe than sorry"
BCX's cryptic "implementation" specific phrasing seems to indicate it is specific to XMR and that BBR already fixed this, or at least most of the exposure to this.
In this case, it highlights the thing that we all know for a while. CZ is the leading cryptonote dev, bar none. Now it could be that there are additional vectors to the one that is found so far, so we must always be on the alert. BCX is a serious guy and I have much respect for him. I am glad that both communities are working closely to get through the next 72 hours. Any attack against XMR will not be good for all the cryptonotes, regardless if BBR is already immune or not.
James
https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/789978.msg8907625#msg8907625