Researchers found a vulnerability in NEAR’s peer-to-peer networking protocol that could have crashed any node, but it was patched before an attacker could discover it.
The smart contract platform NEAR protocol contained a vulnerability that could have allowed an attacker to crash every node on the network, effectively shutting it down.
According to a Sept. 26 report from blockchain security firm Zellic, which discovered it, the vulnerability was quietly eliminated through a patch in January, but some networks may still contain similar flaws.
In the report, Zellic referred to the flaw as a “Web3 Ping of Death,” due to its ability to bring down an entire network “in an instant.”
