CVE-2023-34451
July 03, 2023
CometBFT is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) middleware that takes a state transition machine and replicates it on many machines. 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. In "v0.37.0", and "v0.37.1", as well as in "v0.34.28", and all previous releases of the CometBFT repo2, 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.
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. The problem is fixed in releases "v0.34.29" and "v0.37.2". Some workarounds are available. 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.
Affected Packages
github.com/cometbft/cometbft (GO):
Affected version(s) >=v0.37.0 <v0.37.2Fix Suggestion:
Update to version v0.37.2Related Resources (5)
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Contact UsCVSS v4
Base Score:
8.8
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Attack Requirements
NONE
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
NONE
Vulnerable System Integrity
LOW
Vulnerable System Availability
HIGH
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
8.2
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
LOW
Availability
HIGH
Weakness Type (CWE)
Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
EPSS
Base Score:
0.24