CVE-2026-40092
Received Received - Intake
Denial of Service in Nimiq Blockchain Storage

Publication date: 2026-05-20

Last updated on: 2026-05-20

Assigner: GitHub, Inc.

Description
nimiq-blockchain provides persistent block storage for Nimiq's Rust implementation. In versions 1.3.0 and below, a malicious network peer can crash any Nimiq full node by publishing a crafted Kademlia DHT record. The maliciously crafted record would contain a TaggedSigned<ValidatorRecord, KeyPair> with a signature field whose byte length is not exactly 64 in order to cause a crash. When the victim node's DHT verifier calls TaggedSigned::verify, execution reaches Ed25519Signature::from_bytes(sig).unwrap() in the TaggedPublicKey implementation for Ed25519PublicKey. The from_bytes call fails because ed25519_zebra::Signature::try_from rejects slices not 64 bytes, and the unwrap() panics. The BLS TaggedPublicKey implementation correctly returns false on error; only the Ed25519 implementation panics. This issue has been fixed in version 1.4.0.
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Meta Information
Published
2026-05-20
Last Modified
2026-05-20
Generated
2026-05-21
AI Q&A
2026-05-21
EPSS Evaluated
N/A
NVD
Affected Vendors & Products
Showing 2 associated CPEs
Vendor Product Version / Range
nimiq nimiq-blockchain to 1.4.0 (exc)
nimiq nimiq-blockchain 1.4.0
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
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KEV
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CWE ID Description
CWE-252 The product does not check the return value from a method or function, which can prevent it from detecting unexpected states and conditions.
Attack-Flow Graph
AI Powered Q&A
Can you explain this vulnerability to me?

This vulnerability exists in the nimiq-blockchain software versions 1.3.0 and below. A malicious network peer can crash any Nimiq full node by publishing a specially crafted Kademlia DHT record. The crafted record contains a TaggedSigned object with a signature field that does not have the required 64-byte length. When the victim node attempts to verify this record, the verification process calls a function that expects a 64-byte signature. Because the signature length is incorrect, the function panics and crashes the node. This issue occurs specifically in the Ed25519 signature verification implementation, which panics on invalid input, unlike the BLS implementation that handles errors gracefully. The vulnerability was fixed in version 1.4.0.


How can this vulnerability impact me? :

This vulnerability can cause denial of service by crashing any Nimiq full node that receives a maliciously crafted Kademlia DHT record. An attacker can exploit this to disrupt the operation of nodes, potentially affecting network stability and availability.


What immediate steps should I take to mitigate this vulnerability?

The vulnerability has been fixed in nimiq-blockchain version 1.4.0. The immediate step to mitigate this vulnerability is to upgrade your Nimiq full node to version 1.4.0 or later.


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