GHSA-27w2-87xv-37c6 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-252 vulnerability in nimiq-keys. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
nimiq-keys: Unchecked Ed25519 signature length in TaggedPublicKey::verify causes remote node panic via DHT
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 GHSA-27w2-87xv-37c6.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-27w2-87xv-37c6 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 379,842 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
nimiq-keysReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
A malicious network peer can crash any Nimiq full node by publishing a crafted Kademlia DHT record containing a TaggedSigned<ValidatorRecord, KeyPair> with a signature field whose byte length is not exactly 64. 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.
Patches
The patch for this vulnerability is formally released as part of v1.4.0.
Workarounds
No known workarounds.
Resources
See PR.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | nimiq-keys | all versions | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for nimiq-keys, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
No patched version of nimiq-keys has shipped for GHSA-27w2-87xv-37c6 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
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 GHSA-27w2-87xv-37c6 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.