Vulnerability in Parity Frontier

CVE-2023-28431

Frontier is an Ethereum compatibility layer for Substrate. Frontier's `modexp` precompile uses `num-bigint` crate under the hood. In the implementation prior to pull request 1017, the cases for modulus being even and modulus being odd are treated separately. Odd modulus uses the fast Montgomery multiplication, and even modulus uses the slow plain power algorithm. This gas cost discrepancy was not accounted for in the `modexp` precompile, leading to possible denial of service attacks. No fixes for `num-bigint` are currently available, and thus this issue is fixed in the short term by raising the gas costs for even modulus, and in the long term fixing it in `num-bigint` or switching to another modexp implementation. The short-term fix for Frontier is deployed at pull request 1017. There are no known workarounds aside from applying the fix.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.009 (57.3th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 57th percentile — 57.3% 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-2023-28431: held from 0.009 to 0.009.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.009 · newest: 0.009 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-28431?
CVE-2023-28431 is a high-severity vulnerability in Parity Frontier, classified under Incorrect Calculation. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2023-03-22.
How severe is CVE-2023-28431?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.