Resource exhaustion in Zcashfoundation Zebrad
CVE-2026-40881
ZEBRA is a Zcash node written entirely in Rust. Prior to zebrad version 4.3.0 and zebra-network version 5.0.1, when deserializing addr or addrv2 messages, which contain vectors of addresses, Zebra would fully deserialize them up to a maximum length (over 233,000) that was derived from the 2 MiB message size limit. This is much larger than the actual limit of 1,000 messages from the specification. Zebra would eventually check that limit but, at that point, the memory for the larger vector was already allocated. An attacker could cause out-of-memory aborts in Zebra by sending multiple such messages over different connections. This vulnerability is fixed in zebrad version 4.3.0 and zebra-network version 5.0.1.
EPSS: 0.003 (17.8th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
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.
Affected products
- Zcashfoundation Zebrad — versions < 4.3.1
- Zcashfoundation Zebra-network — versions < 5.0.1
- Zfnd Zebrad
- Zfnd Zebra-network
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- security-advisories@github.com (x_refsource_CONFIRM, Vendor Advisory)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-40881?
- CVE-2026-40881 is a high-severity vulnerability in Zcashfoundation Zebrad, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-04-21.
- How severe is CVE-2026-40881?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.