CVE-2023-33964 mx-chain-go does not treat invalid transaction with wrong username correctly

What is CVE-2023-33964?

CVE-2023-33964 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in multiversx mx-chain-go, published on 31 May 2023. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

mx-chain-go is an implementation of the MultiversX blockchain protocol written in the Go language. Metachain cannot process a cross-shard miniblock. Prior to version 1.4.16, an invalid transaction with the wrong username on metachain is not treated correctly on the metachain transaction processor. This is strictly a processing issue that could have happened on MultiversX chain. If an error like this had occurred, the metachain would have stopped notarizing blocks from the shard chains. The resuming of notarization is possible only after applying a patched binary version. A patch in version 1.4.16 introduces `processIfTxErrorCrossShard` for the metachain transaction processor. There are no known workarounds for this issue.

Weakness: CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-33964?

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

Products include Multiversx Mx-Chain-Go.

How do I fix CVE-2023-33964?

Upgrade github.com/multiversx/mx-chain-go to 1.4.16 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-2023-33964 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-33964 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in multiversx mx-chain-go

• CVE-2023-34458 mx-chain-go's relayed transactions always increment nonce High 7.1

Sources

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

Also known as GHSA-7xpv-4pm9-xch2, GO-2023-1806.