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GHSA-4xc9-8hmq-j652

GitHub Security Advisory

go-ethereum vulnerable to DoS via malicious p2p message

✓ GitHub Reviewed HIGH Has CVE

Advisory Details

### Impact

A vulnerable node can be made to consume very large amounts of memory when handling specially crafted p2p messages sent from an attacker node.

In order to carry out the attack, the attacker establishes a peer connections to the victim, and sends a malicious `GetBlockHeadersRequest` message with a `count` of `0`, using the `ETH` protocol.

In `descendants := chain.GetHeadersFrom(num+count-1, count-1)`, the value of `count-1` is passed to the function `GetHeadersFrom(number, count uint64)` as parameter `count`. Due to integer overflow, `UINT64_MAX` value is then passed as the `count` argument to function `GetHeadersFrom(number, count uint64)`. This allows an attacker to bypass `maxHeadersServe` and request all headers from the latest block back to the genesis block.

### Patches

The fix has been included in geth version `1.13.15` and onwards.

The vulnerability was patched in: https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/pull/29534

### Workarounds

No workarounds have been made public.

### References

No more information is released at this time.

### Credit

This issue was disclosed responsibly by DongHan Kim via the Ethereum bug bounty program. Thank you for your cooperation.

Affected Packages

Go github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum
Affected versions: 0 (fixed in 1.13.15)

Related CVEs

Key Information

GHSA ID
GHSA-4xc9-8hmq-j652
Published
May 6, 2024 2:20 PM
Last Modified
August 16, 2024 6:15 PM
CVSS Score
7.5 /10
Primary Ecosystem
Go
Primary Package
github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum
GitHub Reviewed
✓ Yes

Dataset

Last updated: July 13, 2025 6:28 AM

Data from GitHub Advisory Database. This information is provided for research and educational purposes.