CVE-2021-41138

Description

### Impact 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. ### Patches The issue is patched in commit 146bb48849e5393004be5c88beefe76fdf009aba. ### References Patch PR: https://github.com/paritytech/frontier/pull/495 ### For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: * Open an issue in [Frontier repo](https://github.com/paritytech/frontier/issues) ### Special thanks Special thanks to @librelois, @nanocryk and the Moonbeam team for reporting and fixing this security vulnerability.

How to fix CVE-2021-41138

No fixed version has been published yet. Mitigate by removing the affected package or applying upstream guidance from the references below.

• —no fix listed

Is CVE-2021-41138 being exploited?

Low — EPSS is 1.3%, meaning exploitation activity has not been observed at scale.

Affected packages (1)

• from 0, <= 3.0.0

CVSS scores

References (6)

• ADVISORYnvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-41138
• PATCHgithub.com/polkadot-evm/frontier
• WEBgithub.com/paritytech/frontier/commit/146bb48849e5393004be5c88beefe76fdf009aba
• WEBgithub.com/paritytech/frontier/pull/495
• WEB