CVE-2022-46173 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.2) CWE-669 vulnerability in github.com/ElrondNetwork/elrond-go. A fix is available for github.com/ElrondNetwork/elrond-go — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Elrond go Processing: fallback search of SCRs when not found in the main cache
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-2022-46173.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-46173 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/ElrondNetwork/elrond-goReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
Processing issue, nodes are affected when trying to process a cross-shard relayed transaction with a smart contract deploy transaction data. The problem was a bad correlation between the transaction caches and the processing component. If the above-mentioned transaction was sent with more gas than required, the smart contract result (SCR transaction) that should have returned the leftover gas, would have been wrongly added to a cache that the processing unit did not consider. The node stopped notarizing metachain blocks. The fix was actually to extend the SCR transaction search in all other caches if it wasn't found in the correct (expected) sharded-cache.
Patches
All versions >= v1.3.50 will contain this patch
Workarounds
For the moment there is no workaround
References
N/A
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
- Open an issue in elrond-go main repo
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/ElrondNetwork/elrond-go | all versions | 1.3.50go get github.com/ElrondNetwork/elrond-go@v1.3.50 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/ElrondNetwork/elrond-go, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/ElrondNetwork/elrond-go to 1.3.50 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-46173 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.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-46173 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-46173. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-46173 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-46173 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.