A bug in the Bitcoin Lightning network is allowing attackers to steal BTC remotely from affected lightning nodes.
A Bitcoin developer raised an alarm on the bug on 19 February, saying it affected those using LND older than 0.18.5 and or LITD older than 0.14.1, giving attackers access to drain their lightning nodes.
How to be safe
To stay safe from the bug, users of the affected versions of lightning nodes are to upgrade their nodes immediately.
The dev also advised that users stay away from using LITD for now if they don’t have to. There’s no official statement confirming the “extremely scary” hack which affected some users, latest information from one of the Lightning Labs developers says the issue may not be the way it was thought.
Lightning network is Bitcoin’s Layer 2 network that was meant to facilitate faster transactions and reduce fees.
It does so by carrying out transactions off the main Bitcoin chain so that there’s no congestion and so the transactions are faster and fees are lower.
The network was created as a solution after Bitcoin started becoming congested and transactions became slower with exorbitant fees.
Although the network has had issues such as technical glitches, this is the first time it has been compromised by hackers to steal BTC.
Bitcoin network not affected
Indeed, this is a sad incident in the history of Bitcoin, but it should be made clear that it does not affect the Bitcoin network.
Some may not be able to distinguish the Lightning network from the main Bitcoin network, which may cause an unnecessary panic in the space.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s price seems unaffected and still trades around $96,000 as it has been for a few days now.
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