Tesla just contributed to Bitcoin open-source software.
The car maker disclosed a bug in the open-source Bitcoin payment processor and wallet BTCPay Server, and it also helped the project’s team patch the flaw.
The electric vehicle and renewables company informed BTCPay's team of the bug after reviewing the project's GitHub last week. It affects users who boot BTCPay from “Docker Deployment, have a configured email server and enabled registration for users in Server Settings > Policies,” according to a post on BTCPay’s GitHub that included a software patch.
"The security team did an audit and contacted us. We then focused on fixing most of the points they disclosed one by one. They are now helping us to improve our process for security related disclosure,” BTCPay founder Nicolas Dorier told CoinDesk.
The BTCPay team wrote in its GitHub post that more information on the bug would be disclosed in its next major release.
“We want to thank @teslamotors for filing a responsible disclosure, helping us with remediation, and handling the situation professionally. We also want to thank Qaiser Abbas, an independent web-security researcher, for an additional responsible vulnerability disclosure that was handled in this release,” BTCPay’s team wrote in the software release fixing the bug.
Tesla + BTCPay Server?
BTCPay's team would not comment on why Tesla was reviewing the project's code or if Tesla uses its platform (or a clone of the software) for its bitcoin payments. The code for the bitcoin checkout's invoices, however, shows traces of the same code found in most BTCPay invoices, and Elon Musk has said that the company uses an open-source software to process payments.
BTCPay Server was launched in 2017 by Dorier, a Bitcoin developer, in response to popular Bitcoin payment processor BitPay’s controversial statements regarding the 2016 SegWit soft fork. Since launching, BTCPay has been integrated as a donations portal for charitable efforts around the world, including Nigeria and Venezuela.
The wallet is also used by many Bitcoin industry merchants and companies as a point of sale for online stores.
Since Elon Musk announced Tesla’s billion-dollar bitcoin holdings, the company has also started accepting bitcoin in return for its services. Musk has publicly stated the company plans to hold all bitcoin they receive and not convert it to cash.
Updated (March 31, 2021, 3:28 UTC): Comments from BTCPay Server founder Nicolas Dorier were added.
Updated (March 31, 2012, 12:27 UTC): Adds information about Tesla's invoice code.