GHSA-452v-w3gx-72wg
HIGHGHSA-452v-w3gx-72wg is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Reachable Assertion vulnerability in zebrad. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-452v-w3gx-72wg is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Zebra has rk Identity Point Panic in Transaction Verification
Blast Radius
zebrad🦀zebra-chainReal-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
rk Identity Point Panic in Transaction Verification
Summary
Orchard transactions contain a rk field which is a randomized validating key and also an elliptic curve point. The Zcash specification allows the field to be the identity (a "zero" value), however, the orchard crate which is used to verify Orchard proofs would panic when fed a rk with the identity value. Thus an attacker could send a crafted transaction that would make a Zebra node crash.
Severity
Critical - This is a Denial of Service Vulnerability that could allow an attacker to crash Zebra nodes.
Affected Versions
All Zebra versions prior to version 4.3.1.
Description
The vulnerability exists in the circuits.rs file of the orchard crate; it attempts to get the coordinates of the rk value and calls unwrap() on the results, which causes a panic if rk is the identity.
Zebra parses rk as a byte vector; it creates an Orchard "bundle" using the orchard crate and then calls the same crate to verify it, triggering the panic.
An attacker could exploit this by:
- Creating a transaction with a identity
rk - Submitting it to a Zebra node, making it crash
Impact
Denial of Service
- Attack Vector: Network.
- Effect: Node crash.
- Scope: Any impacted Zebra node.
Fixed Versions
This issue is fixed in Zebra 4.3.1.
The fix was agreed with zcashd developers (which has the same issue) to not allow the identity rk anymore and change the specification as such. Zebra now does this when parsing a transaction. This was deemed easier than fixing the issue in orchard, which would make the bug public before the nodes could be patched.
Mitigation
Users should upgrade to Zebra 4.3.1 or later immediately.
There are no known workarounds for this issue. Immediate upgrade is the only way to ensure the node remains not vulnerable to denial of service.
Credits
Thanks to Alex “Scalar” Sol for finding and reporting the issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | zebrad | all versions | 4.3.1 |
| 🦀crates.io | zebra-chain | all versions | 6.0.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for zebrad. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update zebrad to 4.3.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-452v-w3gx-72wg 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 pinpoints whether GHSA-452v-w3gx-72wg is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-452v-w3gx-72wg. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-452v-w3gx-72wg in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-452v-w3gx-72wg across crates.io dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.