CVE-2023-34451CometBFT may duplicate transactions in the mempool's data structures
- 8.2HighCVSS base score
- 0.90%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 40% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- YesPublic exploitsa reference or SSVC says so
Description
CometBFT is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) middleware that takes a state transition machine and replicates it on many machines. The mempool maintains two data structures to keep track of outstanding transactions: a list and a map. These two data structures are supposed to be in sync all the time in the sense that the map tracks the index (if any) of the transaction in the list. In `v0.37.0`, and `v0.37.1`, as well as in `v0.34.28`, and all previous releases of the CometBFT repo2, it is possible to have them out of sync. When this happens, the list may contain several copies of the same transaction. Because the map tracks a single index, it is then no longer possible to remove all the copies of the transaction from the list. This happens even if the duplicated transaction is later committed in a block. The only way to remove the transaction is by restarting the node. The above problem can be repeated on and on until a sizable number of transactions are stuck in the mempool, in order to try to bring down the target node. The problem is fixed in releases `v0.34.29` and `v0.37.2`. Some workarounds are available. Increasing the value of `cache_size` in `config.toml` makes it very difficult to effectively attack a full node. Not exposing the transaction submission RPC's would mitigate the probability of a successful attack, as the attacker would then have to create a modified (byzantine) full node to be able to perform the attack via p2p.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. CISA's SSVC rates its exploitation: a proof of concept is public.
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 27 days later
· 27 days later
Published
- 17 months later
· 17 months later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High8.2 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High8.2 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.90% · top 40% of all CVEs (13 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.2.
Affected products
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Gogithub.com/cometbft/cometbftGHSA-w24w-wp77-qffm (opens in a new tab)
References
References3
- https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/security/advisories/GHSA-w24w-wp77-qffm (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- https://github.com/cometbft/cometbft/pull/890 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint/pull/2778 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2023-2155 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-w24w-wp77-qffm (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2023-34451)Record last updated .