71% of Flagged LND Nodes Remain on Affected Lines Through Oct. 13

At an Oct. 13 cutoff, 71% of a group of public Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning nodes flagged on affected LND release lines in August remained on those lines, showing slow migration after a security warning.

Lightning Labs disclosed six denial-of-service vulnerabilities on Aug. 11. At that point, the affected lines represented 14.9% of live public LND nodes and 6.4% of their channel capacity in an analysis that excluded one managed fleet. The 71% result applies only to nodes flagged then, not to the Lightning Network as a whole.

By Oct. 13, 10% of the flagged group had moved to newer release lines and 20% were no longer live. Those figures and the 71% remaining on affected lines are rounded.

The fixes had shipped in LND v0.19.0-beta on May 22, 2025, 446 days before disclosure. LND is software for operating nodes on the Lightning Network, which carries Bitcoin payments through channels outside Bitcoin’s main transaction layer.

Bitcoin Data Labs researcher Saurabh Kumar examined 814 daily snapshots of the public network from May 2023 through Oct. 13. Node announcements reveal software features but no version string, so the analysis estimates release lines rather than identifying exact patch versions. It also cannot observe unannounced nodes, including many mobile wallets.

“Exposure is not exploitability,” Kumar wrote. Advertising an affected release line does not establish whether an individual node met the conditions required for an attack. The findings describe visible software patterns, not confirmed vulnerabilities in every flagged installation.

The three largest observed LND upgrade waves followed Umbrel app releases. Each involved 262 to 385 nodes, at least 87% of which advertised a newer line within 48 hours of the relevant Umbrel release. Those releases came 19 to 41 days after the corresponding LND releases. The timing does not establish which platform any individual node used.

Across nine LND security disclosures that could be tested, the weekly share of live nodes on affected release lines moving to newer lines showed no statistically detectable increase. Around the Aug. 11 disclosure, that share measured 1.4% both before and after. A smaller response cannot be ruled out.

Lightning Labs has urged node operators to update to v0.19.0-beta or later.