Quote from: raybucks on Today at 08:16:09 AM

How do Bitcoin's "magic bytes" ensure that transactions are correctly identified and processed by the network,
and what happens if these magic bytes are tampered with or misused in a transaction ?

'Magic bytes' help nodes to parse the incoming data.
Nodes are searching for the specific sequence of bytes that is defined as the 'magic bytes' which helps them to identify the beginning of new block data.

The version bytes ensure that addresses are processed correctly in the right network. For example: This different bytes prevents someone to send Bitcoin to a Bitcoin-Cash address which has different version bytes than Bitcoin.

To ur point about tampered or misued magic bytes there is a pretty simple answer:
The node will not recognize the specific block. Following to this the block will not go thru the network and might be markes as 'invalid'.

It will be rejected by the network.