CVE-2021-29511 Memory over-allocation in evm crate

What is CVE-2021-29511?

CVE-2021-29511 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in rust-blockchain evm, published on 12 May 2021. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

evm is a pure Rust implementation of Ethereum Virtual Machine. Prior to the patch, when executing specific EVM opcodes related to memory operations that use `evm_core::Memory::copy_large`, the `evm` crate can over-allocate memory when it is not needed, making it possible for an attacker to perform denial-of-service attack. The flaw was corrected in commit `19ade85`. Users should upgrade to `==0.21.1, ==0.23.1, ==0.24.1, ==0.25.1, >=0.26.1`. There are no workarounds. Please upgrade your `evm` crate version.

Weakness: CWE-787, CWE-770

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-29511?

24 open source packages ship an affected version, including evm and evm-core. It affects 1 product.

Products include Evm Project Evm.

How do I fix CVE-2021-29511?

Upgrade evm to a fixed version for your release line: 0.21.1, 0.22.1, 0.23.1 or 0.24.1.

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-2021-29511 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-29511 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in rust-blockchain evm

• CVE-2021-41153 Specification non-compliance in JUMPI High 8.7
• CVE-2024-21629 Erroneous handling of `record_external_operation` error return Medium 5.9
• CVE-2022-39354 evm has incorrect is_static parameter for custom stateful precompiles Medium 5.9

Sources

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

Also known as GHSA-4jwq-572w-4388.