# CVE-2025-54427: Polkadot Frontier contains missing `check_inherent` for `note_min_gas_price_target` inflates gas price

> Block producers can manipulate gas price targets due to missing validation, causing inflated fees and denial of service for contract execution.

- **Severity:** Medium 6.9 (`CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 28 Jul 2025
- **Updated:** 28 Jul 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-r6rj-gmqh-cv94

## What is CVE-2025-54427?

CVE-2025-54427 is a medium-severity vulnerability in polkadot-evm frontier, published on 28 Jul 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

Polkadot Frontier is an Ethereum and EVM compatibility layer for Polkadot and Substrate. The extrinsic note_min_gas_price_target is an inherent extrinsic, meaning only the block producer can call it. To ensure correctness, the ProvideInherent trait should be implemented for each inherent, which includes the check_inherent call. This allows other nodes to verify if the input (in this case, the target value) is correct. However, prior to commit a754b3d, the check_inherent function has not been implemented for note_min_gas_price_target. This lets the block producer set the target value without verification. The target is then used to set the MinGasPrice, which has an upper and lower bound defined in the on_initialize hook. The block producer can set the target to the upper bound. Which also increases the upper and lower bounds for the next block. Over time, this could result in continuously raising the gas price, making contract execution too expensive and ineffective for users. An attacker could use this flaw to manipulate the gas price, potentially leading to significantly inflated transaction fees. Such manipulation could render contract execution prohibitively expensive for users, effectively resulting in a denial-of-service condition for the network. This is fixed in version a754b3d.

Weakness: CWE-754 (Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions), CWE-682 (Incorrect Calculation)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-54427?


## How do I fix CVE-2025-54427?

No fix has been published for CVE-2025-54427 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2025-54427 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-54427 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-54427 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-54427 is a medium-severity vulnerability in polkadot-evm frontier, published on 28 Jul 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-54427 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: polkadot-evm frontier. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-54427/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-54427/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-54427
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-54427
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-54427

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-54427/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.