Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessBroadcast lock-time-boundary tx right after each block
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DeliveryLagging node verifies tx at its lower next-block height
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ExploitRejection scored at ban threshold (100)
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ExecutionHonest relaying peer's IP group banned
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ImpactBest-connected nodes lose peers, peer set degraded
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A06:2025 - Insecure Design
ASVS 5.0
V15 - Secure Coding and Architecture Protection mechanism completeness
|
| Exploitation Conditions | No configuration change is required: the node must be running affected zebrad (4.5.0-6.4.2 or 7.0.0-rc.0) with P2P networking enabled and the mempool active (default once near the chain tip) and accepting transaction relay from peers (default). The exploitable window is narrow and timing-bound - the victim node must be exactly one block behind a relaying peer at the moment a lock-time-boundary transaction arrives, so the attacker must broadcast transactions locked to the current height immediately after each new block and reach nodes that have already committed it. Limiting factors: the condition self-heals the instant the lagging node receives the next block, impact is confined to peer connectivity (no crash, consensus divergence, state corruption, or loss of funds), and mining/RPC/wallet configuration is irrelevant. Severity of persistence varies by branch: 6.4.x bans an IP group for 24 hours, while 4.5.0-6.3.x hold the ban per IP until the node restarts. |
| Impact | This is a genuine but bounded availability/peer-reachability issue, not a high-impact priority. All impact signals point one direction: the input CVSS 4.0 vector (AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N) scores VA:L with VC:N/VI:N and no subsequent-system impact, and the vendor GHSA advisory's CVSS 3.1 vector (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L = 5.3) agrees - the only impact is availability of peer connections. Note a numeric discrepancy worth flagging: the input lists CVSS 6.9 while the ZcashFoundation advisory rates it 5.3; both are Medium, so the qualitative conclusion is unchanged, but the 6.9 figure is not corroborated by the vendor. No CISA KEV entry is present and no EPSS score was supplied, so there is no evidence of active or widespread exploitation; the vuln.today decision label is 'this_month' (not act_now/emergency). No weaponized public exploit code is indicated - an independent public bug report (#11623) and a private two-node reproduction exist, but these are reports of the defect, not off-the-shelf exploit code. Net: a real protection-mechanism-failure defect that lets an attacker erode an honest node's peer set, but it does not touch funds, consensus, or node liveness and self-heals on the next block, so it warrants scheduled patching rather than emergency response. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker broadcasts transactions whose lock time is satisfied only at the current tip height immediately after each new block is mined, sending them to peers that have already committed the block. Nodes that are one block behind reject the relayed transaction with a lock-time error and ban the honest relaying peer (24 hours on 6.4.x, until restart on 4.5.0-6.3.x), repeatedly stripping well-connected honest nodes of peers. No public exploit code is identified; an independent public report (#11623) and a private two-node reproduction document the behavior. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Nov 08, 2026
Zcash Foundation's Zebra node (zebrad) scores lock-time mempool rejections at the peer-ban threshold, so a node that is one block behind a relaying peer permanently or temporarily bans that honest peer for simply relaying a valid transaction. Affected versions are 4.5.0 through 6.4.2 and 7.0.0-rc.0, and the flaw is remotely reachable without authentication by any peer that can relay or advertise transactions (CVSS 3.1: AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/VA:L). The impact is limited to peer-set erosion rather than consensus, funds or node liveness: 6.4.x bans the sender's IP group for 24 hours, while 4.5.0 through 6.3.x hold the ban per IP with no time-based expiry until the node restarts. No public exploit code has been identified at time of analysis, although the issue was independently reported publicly (issue #11623) and the reporter described a complete two-node reproduction.
RemediationAI
Upgrade zebrad to 7.0.0 or later, which is the vendor-released patch. The fix in PR #11627 (https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/pull/11627) removes the peer misbehavior score for lock-height and lock-time rejections via adjusted_mempool_misbehavior_score in zebrad/src/components/mempool.rs; the transaction is still rejected locally until it becomes valid, and blocks containing non-final transactions are still scored exactly as before, so no detection capability is lost by upgrading. Release notes are at https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/releases/tag/v7.0.0 and the advisory at https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/security/advisories/GHSA-5h3r-fpmj-483w, with VulnCheck's write-up at https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/zebra-4.5.0-before-7.0.0-honest-peer-ban-via-mempool-lock-time-scoring. The vendor lists no configuration toggle that disables the scoring path, so on 4.5.0 through 6.4.2 and 7.0.0-rc.0 the only documented workaround is operational: keep the node well connected and in sync so it is less often one block behind a relaying peer, which shortens the window in which a boundary-locked transaction can be scored at the ban threshold - though it reduces rather than eliminates the exposure, and on 4.5.0-6.3.x a ban that does occur persists until the node is restarted.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
Zebra validates peer-relayed mempool transactions against what it believes will be the next block height, and the lock-height rule requires the candidate height to be strictly greater than the transaction's lock height. A peer at tip H evaluates a transaction for candidate H+1, whereas a node at tip H-1 evaluates the same transaction for candidate H, so a transaction locked until height H legitimately passes on the ahead peer and fails with a lock-time error on the lagging node. The root cause is a protection-mechanism failure (CWE-693) in the misbehavior-scoring layer: the mempool scoring function assigns LockedUntilAfterBlockHeight and LockedUntilAfterBlockTime a score of 100, exactly equal to the network ban threshold, and a peer-attributed verification failure sends that score for the relaying peer, which the address book converts into a ban of the peer's IP group when the batched update is flushed. A second code path reaches the same score when the receiving node's own tip advances mid-verification: a successful result is retried against the new tip, but a failed result is scored without comparing tips. Both pushed and advertised transactions carry the sending peer's address into this path. For reference, zcashd treats a non-final mempool transaction as non-standard with a ban score of 0 and scores non-final transactions inside a block separately. The lock-time errors were only added to the ban-threshold scoring arm in 4.5.0; 4.4.1 scored them 0. The trigger window is narrow and timing-bound: the victim must be exactly one block behind a relaying peer at the moment a lock-time-boundary transaction arrives, and the condition self-heals as soon as the next block is committed.
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Severity by source
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Remote, unauthenticated, no user interaction, triggered by ordinary tx relay (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N); impact is limited loss of peer availability only, so C:N/I:N/A:L, scope unchanged.
Primary rating from Vendor (VulnCheck).
CVSS VectorVendor: VulnCheck
Lifecycle Timeline
1DescriptionCVE.org
ZcashFoundation Zebra from 4.5.0 before 7.0.0 contains a protection mechanism failure that bans honest peers by scoring mempool lock-time rejections at the ban threshold. Attackers can broadcast transactions locked until the current height right after each block, causing lagging nodes to ban honest relaying peers for 24 hours or until restart.
Threat Intelligence Overview
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
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EUVD-2026-119441
GHSA-7gc8-jc34-45g3
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Exploit-DB