Bitcoin Core version 0.10.3 is now available from:
https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.10.3/
This is a new minor version release, bringing security fixes and translation updates. It is recommended to upgrade to this version as soon as possible.
Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues
If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait until it has completely shut down (which might take a few minutes for older versions), then run the installer (on Windows) or just copy over /Applications/Bitcoin-Qt (on Mac) or bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).
Because release 0.10.0 and later makes use of headers-first synchronization and parallel block download (see further), the block files and databases are not backwards-compatible with pre-0.10 versions of Bitcoin Core or other software:
Blocks will be stored on disk out of order (in the order they are received, really), which makes it incompatible with some tools or other programs. Reindexing using earlier versions will also not work anymore as a result of this.
The block index database will now hold headers for which no block is stored on disk, which earlier versions won’t support.
If you want to be able to downgrade smoothly, make a backup of your entire data directory. Without this your node will need start syncing (or importing from bootstrap.dat) anew afterwards. It is possible that the data from a completely synchronised 0.10 node may be usable in older versions as-is, but this is not supported and may break as soon as the older version attempts to reindex.
This does not affect wallet forward or backward compatibility.
Bundled miniupnpc was updated to 1.9.20151008. This fixes a buffer overflow in the XML parser during initial network discovery.
Details can be found here: http://talosintel.com/reports/TALOS-2015-0035/
This applies to the distributed executables only, not when building from source or using distribution provided packages.
Additionally, upnp has been disabled by default. This may result in a lower number of reachable nodes on IPv4, however this prevents future libupnpc vulnerabilities from being a structural risk to the network (see https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6795).
Make the node require the canonical ‘low-s’ encoding for ECDSA signatures when relaying or mining. This removes a nuisance malleability vector.
Consensus behavior is unchanged.
If widely deployed this change would eliminate the last remaining known vector for nuisance malleability on SIGHASH_ALL P2PKH transactions. On the down-side it will block most transactions made by sufficiently out of date software.
Unlike the other avenues to change txids on transactions this one was randomly violated by all deployed bitcoin software prior to its discovery. So, while other malleability vectors where made non-standard as soon as they were discovered, this one has remained permitted. Even BIP62 did not propose applying this rule to old version transactions, but conforming implementations have become much more common since BIP62 was initially written.
Bitcoin Core has produced compatible signatures since a28fb70e in September 2013, but this didn’t make it into a release until 0.9 in March 2014; Bitcoinj has done so for a similar span of time. Bitcoinjs and electrum have been more recently updated.
This does not replace the need for BIP62 or similar, as miners can still cooperate to break transactions. Nor does it replace the need for wallet software to handle malleability sanely[1]. This only eliminates the cheap and irritating DOS attack.
[1] On the Malleability of Bitcoin Transactions Marcin Andrychowicz, Stefan Dziembowski, Daniel Malinowski, Łukasz Mazurek http://fc15.ifca.ai/preproceedings/bitcoin/paper_9.pdf
The default for the -minrelaytxfee setting has been increased from 0.00001
to 0.00005.
This is necessitated by the current transaction flooding, causing outrageous memory usage on nodes due to the mempool ballooning. This is a temporary measure, bridging the time until a dynamic method for determining this fee is merged (which will be in 0.12).
(see https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6793, as well as the 0.11.0 release notes, in which this value was suggested)
Detailed release notes follow. This overview includes changes that affect external behavior, not code moves, refactors or string updates.
e4a7d51 Fix two problems in CSubnet parsingebd7d8d Parameter interaction: disable upnp if -proxy setecc96f5 Remove P2SH coinbase flag, no longer interesting181771b json: fail read_string if string contains trailing garbage09334e0 configure: Detect (and reject) LibreSSL0fd8464 Fix getbalance * 0be64204 Add option -alerts to opt out of alert system3f55638 doc: update mailing list address7e66e9c openssl: avoid config file load/race255eced Updated URL location of netinstall for Debian0739e6e Test whether created sockets are select()ablef696ea1 [QT] fix thin space word wrap line brake issue743cc9e Backport bugfixes to 0.101cea6b0 Test LowS in standardness, removes nuisance malleability vector.093d7b5 Update miniupnpc to 1.9.20151008f2778e0 net: Disable upnp by default91ef4d9 Do not store more than 200 timedata samples842c48d Bump minrelaytxfee defaultThanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:
And all those who contributed additional code review and/or security research:
As well as everyone that helped translating on Transifex.