CVE-2022-36025 — evm
CRITICALCVE-2022-36025 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.1) CWE-196 vulnerability in org.hyperledger.besu:evm. A fix is available for org.hyperledger.besu:evm — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Incorrect Conversion between Numeric Types in Besu Ethereum Client
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-36025.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
org.hyperledger.besu:evmReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
An error in 32 bit signed and unsigned types in the calculation of available gas in the CALL operations (including DELEGATECALL) results in incorrect gas being passed into called contracts and incorrect gas being returned after call execution. Where the amount of gas makes a difference in the success or failure, or if the gas is a negative 64 bit value, the execution will result in a different state root than expected, resulting in a consensus failure in networks with multiple EVM implementations.
In networks with a single EVM implementation this can be used to execute with significantly more gas than then transaction requested, possibly exceeding gas limitations.
Patches
Version 22.7.1 contains a fix, ensuring that excess gas will not be allocated to inner transaction calls and correcting the excess gas errors.
Workarounds
Reverting to version 22.1.3 or earlier will prevent incorrect execution. However many ethereum mainnet networks require changes in more recent versions of Besu and should not use older versions of besu and should instead use the patched version.
Ethereum Classic and other networks not depending on a Proof of Stake transition should function fine with version 22.1.3 or earlier.
For more information
Issue was found by Martin Holst Swende using goevmlab, it is believed that no production networks have transactions that would trigger this failure.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.hyperledger.besu:evm | ≥ 22.4.0-RC1&&< 22.7.1 | 22.7.1org.hyperledger.besu:evm:22.7.1 |
Affected Products
besulinuxfoundationDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.hyperledger.besu:evm, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.hyperledger.besu:evm to 22.7.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-36025 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-36025 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.