CVE-2023-40591 Denial of service via malicious p2p message in go-ethereum

What is CVE-2023-40591?

CVE-2023-40591 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in go-ethereum, published on 6 Sep 2023. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

go-ethereum (geth) is a golang execution layer implementation of the Ethereum protocol. A vulnerable node, can be made to consume unbounded amounts of memory when handling specially crafted p2p messages sent from an attacker node. The fix is included in geth version `1.12.1-stable`, i.e, `1.12.2-unstable` and onwards. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Weakness: CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-40591?

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-2023-40591?

Upgrade github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum to a fixed version for your release line: 1.12.1 or 1.12.1-stable.

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-2023-40591 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-40591 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-2021-42219 Denial of service in go-ethereum High 7.5
• CVE-2022-23327 Denial of Service in Go-Ethereum High 7.5
• CVE-2022-23328 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-ppjg-v974-84cm, GO-2023-2046.