CVE-2020-26264 LES Server DoS via GetProofsV2

What is CVE-2020-26264?

CVE-2020-26264 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in go-ethereum, published on 11 Dec 2020. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Go Ethereum, or "Geth", is the official Golang implementation of the Ethereum protocol. In Geth before version 1.9.25 a denial-of-service vulnerability can make a LES server crash via malicious GetProofsV2 request from a connected LES client. This vulnerability only concerns users explicitly enabling les server; disabling les prevents the exploit. The vulnerability was patched in version 1.9.25.

Weakness: CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-26264?

3 open source packages ship an affected version, including github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum. It affects 1 product.

Products include Ethereum Go Ethereum.

How do I fix CVE-2020-26264?

Upgrade github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum to 1.9.25 or later.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2020-26264 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-26264 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in go-ethereum

• CVE-2026-26314 Go Ethereum affected by DoS via malicious p2p message High 8.7
• CVE-2023-42319 go-ethereum vulnerable to denial of service via crafted GraphQL query High 7.5
• CVE-2023-40591 Denial of service via malicious p2p message in go-ethereum High 7.5
• CVE-2021-42219 Denial of service in go-ethereum High 7.5
• CVE-2022-23327 Denial of Service in Go-Ethereum High 7.5

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-r33q-22hv-j29q, GO-2021-0063.