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GHSA-w24w-wp77-qffm

HighCVSS 8.2 / 10
Published Jul 5, 2023·Last modified Nov 8, 2023
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Impact

The mempool maintains two data structures to keep track of outstanding transactions: a list and a map. These two data structures are supposed to be in sync all the time in the sense that the map tracks the index (if any) of the transaction in the list.

Unfortunately, it is possible to have them out of sync. When this happens, the list may contain several copies of the same transaction. Because the map tracks a single index, it is then no longer possible to remove all the copies of the transaction from the list. This happens even if the duplicated transaction is later committed in a block. The only way to remove the transaction is by restarting the node.

These are the steps to cause the above duplication problem. Everything should happen within one height, that is no FinalizeBlock or BeginBlock ABCI calls should happen while these steps are reproduced:

  1. send transaction tx1 to the target full node via RPC
  2. send N more different transactions to the target full node, where N should be higher than the node's configured value for cache_size in config.toml
  3. send transaction tx1 again to the target full node

One of the copies of tx1 is now stuck in the mempool's data structures. Effectively causing a memory leak, and having that node gossiping that transaction to its peers forever.

The above problem can be repeated on and on until a sizable number of transactions are stuck in the mempool, in order to try to bring down the target node.

This problem is present in releases: v0.37.0, and v0.37.1, as well as in v0.34.28, and all previous releases of the CometBFT repo. It will be fixed in releases v0.34.29 and v0.37.2.

Patches

The PR containing the fix is here.

Workarounds

  • Increasing the value of cache_size in config.toml makes it very difficult to effectively attack a full node.
  • Not exposing the transaction submission RPC's would mitigate the probability of a successful attack, as the attacker would then have to create a modified (byzantine) full node to be able to perform the attack via p2p.

References

  • PR that introduced the map to track transactions in the mempool.
  • PR containing the fix.
Risk Scores
Base Score
8.2

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 low impact on the integrity of the data. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
7.5

Exploitation activity has been observed. Apply available patches or mitigations urgently.

EPSS
0.90%

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.

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High severity
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