Andreas Kohl, co-founder of the Bitcoin sidechain Sequentia, announced on December 12 that he had crashed 69% of the Dogecoin network using an old laptop in El Salvador.

According to Blockchair, Dogecoin had 647 active nodes before the attack. However, after the exploit, this number dropped to 315.

Kohl stated that he used a vulnerability discovered by researcher Tobias Ruck to execute the crash.

The DogeReaper Vulnerability and “Death Note” Comparison

On December 4, an X account (formerly Twitter) called “Department Of DOGE Efficiency” disclosed a vulnerability in the Dogecoin network that had the potential to crash the entire chain. This vulnerability was named “DogeReaper.”

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The account described the flaw as similar to the concept of the famous Japanese manga and anime series “Death Note.” In the story, writing someone’s name in a notebook causes them to die of a heart attack.

DogeReaper works similarly by targeting a node’s address and causing a segmentation fault that crashes the node. A segmentation fault occurs when a program tries to access a memory space it isn’t authorized to use, prompting the operating system to terminate the program for safety reasons.

The account claimed that since Dogecoin nodes are publicly known, “anyone could crash the entire Dogecoin network instantly” using this vulnerability. They added, “If a malicious actor had discovered this bug instead of us, they could have halted the Dogecoin network for at least a few days, preventing any transactions or blocks.”

Rewards and Security Assessment

Tobias Ruck, who discovered the vulnerability, reported it to Coinbase. However, Coinbase classified the severity of the issue as low and rewarded Ruck with just $200.

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