Open-Source Security Intelligence

Know every vulnerability
before it knows you.

DevGuard continuously monitors your dependencies and alerts you when CVEs like this one affect your stack — with real-time threat intelligence built for developers.

Search

CVE-2023-28431

HighCVSS 7.5 / 10
Published Mar 22, 2023·Last modified Apr 10, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Frontier is an Ethereum compatibility layer for Substrate. Frontier's modexp precompile uses num-bigint crate under the hood. In the implementation prior to pull request 1017, the cases for modulus being even and modulus being odd are treated separately. Odd modulus uses the fast Montgomery multiplication, and even modulus uses the slow plain power algorithm. This gas cost discrepancy was not accounted for in the modexp precompile, leading to possible denial of service attacks.

No fixes for num-bigint are currently available, and thus this issue is fixed in the short term by raising the gas costs for even modulus, and in the long term fixing it in num-bigint or switching to another modexp implementation. The short-term fix for Frontier is deployed at pull request 1017. There are no known workarounds aside from applying the fix.

Risk Scores
Base Score
7.5

The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
6.9

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
0.87%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

Scan your project

Continuously monitor your dependencies and get alerted when vulnerabilities like this one affect your stack.

Checkout DevGuard