Improper input validation in Parity Frontier

CVE-2021-41138

Frontier is Substrate's Ethereum compatibility layer. In the newly introduced signed Frontier-specific extrinsic for `pallet-ethereum`, a large part of transaction validation logic was only called in transaction pool validation, but not in block execution. Malicious validators can take advantage of this to put invalid transactions into a block. The attack is limited in that the signature is always validated, and the majority of the validation is done again in the subsequent `pallet-evm` execution logic. However, do note that a chain ID replay attack was possible. In addition, spamming attacks are of main concerns, while they are limited by Substrate block size limits and other factors. The issue is patched in commit `146bb48849e5393004be5c88beefe76fdf009aba`.

Vulnerability class: Drupalgeddon 2 (CVE-2018-7600)

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.014 (71.1th percentile), scored .

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 71st percentile — 71.1% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2021-41138: held from 0.014 to 0.014.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.014 · newest: 0.014 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2021-41138?
CVE-2021-41138 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Parity Frontier, classified under Improper Input Validation. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2021-10-13.
How severe is CVE-2021-41138?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.