CVE-2023-28431
March 22, 2023
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.
Related Resources (7)
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Contact UsCVSS v4
Base Score:
8.7
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Attack Requirements
NONE
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
NONE
Vulnerable System Integrity
NONE
Vulnerable System Availability
HIGH
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
7.5
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Weakness Type (CWE)
Incorrect Calculation
EPSS
Base Score:
0.27