Summary
Remote memory exhaustion in ckb
In the ckb sync protocol, SyncState maintains a HashMap called 'misbehavior' that keeps a score of a peer's violations of the protocol. This HashMap is keyed to PeerIndex (an alias for SessionId), and entries are never removed from it. SessionId is an integer that increases monotonically with every new connection.
A remote attacker can manipulate this HashMap to grow forever, resulting in degraded performance and ultimately a panic on allocation failure or being killed by the OS, depending on the platform.
This is a critical severity security bug. It could be exploited to create a targeted or network-wide denial of service, to reduce the hash power of the network as part of a 51% attack, and perhaps in other creative ways.
An attack is trivial:
- connect to another node
- send an invalid sync protocol request, such as
SendHeadersfor non-consecutive blocks - disconnect
- repeat
Impact
Crafted input forces the application to consume excessive CPU, memory, or other resources, degrading or denying service. Typical impact: denial of service.
Affected versions
Security releases
Kodem intelligence
Severity tells you how bad this could be in the worst case. It does not tell you whether you are exposed. Exploitability and impact are functions of runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A vulnerable package can sit in your dependency tree and never run.
Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter. Kodem's runtime-powered SCA identifies whether this CVE is reachable in your applications.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- What is GHSA-48VQ-8JQV-GM6F? GHSA-48VQ-8JQV-GM6F is a high-severity uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in ckb (rust), affecting versions < 0.40.0. It is fixed in 0.40.0. Crafted input forces the application to consume excessive CPU, memory, or other resources, degrading or denying service.
- Which versions of ckb are affected by GHSA-48VQ-8JQV-GM6F? ckb (rust) versions < 0.40.0 is affected.
- Is there a fix for GHSA-48VQ-8JQV-GM6F? Yes. GHSA-48VQ-8JQV-GM6F is fixed in 0.40.0. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is GHSA-48VQ-8JQV-GM6F exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether GHSA-48VQ-8JQV-GM6F is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
- What actually determines whether GHSA-48VQ-8JQV-GM6F is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
- How do I fix GHSA-48VQ-8JQV-GM6F? Upgrade
ckbto 0.40.0 or later.