Ethereum
CVE-2023-40591
HIGH
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A06:2025 - Insecure Design
ASVS 5.0
V2 - Validation and Business Logic Resource consumption limits
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Impact The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Impact | CVSS score of 7.5 (HIGH). Attack characteristics: network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction not required. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | A remote attacker could cause denial of service by exhausting system resources by sending crafted requests to the affected application. No authentication is required to exploit this vulnerability. |
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Alert meAnalysisAI
go-ethereum (geth) is a golang execution layer implementation of the Ethereum protocol. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
RemediationAI
No vendor patch is available at time of analysis. Monitor vendor advisories for updates. Implement rate limiting, set resource quotas, validate input sizes, use timeouts.
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in go
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified as Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400), which allows attackers to cause denial of service by exhausting system resources. go-ethereum (geth) is a golang execution layer implementation of the Ethereum protocol. A vulnerable node, can be made to consume unbounded amounts of memory when handling specially crafted p2p messages sent from an attacker node. The fix is included in geth version 1.12.1-stable, i.e, 1.12.2-unstable and onwards. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability. Affected products include: Ethereum Go Ethereum.
Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionNVD
go-ethereum (geth) is a golang execution layer implementation of the Ethereum protocol. A vulnerable node, can be made to consume unbounded amounts of memory when handling specially crafted p2p messages sent from an attacker node. The fix is included in geth version 1.12.1-stable, i.e, 1.12.2-unstable and onwards. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
GitHub
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Denial of Service attacks render applications or systems unavailable by overwhelming resources or triggering failure conditions.
Affected Products (CPE)NVD
Py-EVM v0.2.0-alpha.33 allows attackers to make a vm.execute_bytecode call that triggers computation._stack.values with
A design flaw in all versions of Go-Ethereum allows an attacker node to send 5120 pending transactions of a high gas pri
A design flaw in Go-Ethereum 1.10.12 and older versions allows an attacker node to send 5120 future transactions with a
Geth (aka go-ethereum) through 1.13.4, when --http --graphql is used, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of servi
An exponential ReDoS (Regular Expression Denial of Service) can be triggered in the eth-account PyPI package, when an at
Go Ethereum (aka geth) 1.8.19 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by rewriting the length
cmd/evm/runner.go in Go Ethereum (aka geth) 1.8.17 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (SEGV) via crafted byte
The GetBlockHeadersMsg handler in the LES protocol implementation in Go Ethereum (aka geth) before 1.8.11 may lead to an
Go Ethereum (aka geth) through 1.10.21 allows attackers to increase rewards by mining blocks in certain situations, and
Circuit soundness failure in Payy (polybase/payy) prior to 1.3.0 lets an authorized rollup prover smuggle an extra burn
Geth versions prior to 1.16.9 can be remotely crashed by sending a specially crafted message over the network, allowing
Go Ethereum (geth) nodes can be remotely crashed through maliciously crafted network messages, causing denial of service
Exploit-DB