RUSTSEC-2026-0231 Relay authentication challenges can exhaust memory

Not scored Published

A malicious relay can exhaust client memory by flooding authentication challenges, causing denial of service in the Rust Nostr SDK.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
Not needed
Attackable
Over the internet
Victim action needed
Not needed
Fix
Available

What is RUSTSEC-2026-0231?

RUSTSEC-2026-0231 is a denial of service vulnerability in nostr-relay-pool, published on 1 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The SDK forwarded every NIP-42 AUTH challenge received from a relay through an unbounded command queue. Challenge handling can wait for an asynchronous signer or user interaction, so receiving challenges was substantially faster than completing the corresponding authentication work.

A malicious relay could continuously send new challenges without authenticating or delivering valid events. Every value remained queued, causing memory use and pending signer operations to grow without a fixed limit until the client became unavailable. The issue does not allow the relay to forge a signature or learn the client's private key.

The SDK now coalesces pending challenges through a latest-value channel. NIP-42 makes an earlier challenge invalid when the relay sends a new one, so replacing pending work preserves the only challenge that can still be answered while keeping memory use bounded.

Which versions are affected by RUSTSEC-2026-0231?

1 open source package ship an affected version, including nostr-relay-pool.

PackageAffectedFixed in
nostr-relay-pool crates.ioFrom 0.0.0-00.44.3

How do I fix RUSTSEC-2026-0231?

Upgrade nostr-relay-pool to 0.44.3 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 RUSTSEC-2026-0231 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of RUSTSEC-2026-0231 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

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