CVE-2018-19152 in emercoin
Summary
by MITRE
emercoin through 0.7 (a chain-based proof-of-stake cryptocurrency) allows a remote denial of service. The attacker sends invalid headers/blocks. The attack requires no stake and can fill the victim's disk and RAM.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/04/2024
The emercoin cryptocurrency implementation through version 0.7 contains a critical vulnerability that enables remote denial of service attacks without requiring any stake or computational resources from the attacker. This vulnerability stems from insufficient validation mechanisms within the blockchain protocol that governs header and block processing. The flaw specifically affects the network's ability to handle malformed or invalid data structures that are sent by malicious actors, creating a scenario where legitimate nodes can be overwhelmed through resource exhaustion attacks.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability occurs at the network layer where emercoin nodes fail to properly validate incoming block headers and transaction data before processing them. This lack of comprehensive input validation creates an opportunity for attackers to craft specially designed invalid blocks that consume excessive system resources when processed by victim nodes. The attack vector exploits the protocol's trust model where nodes accept and attempt to validate all incoming data without sufficient sanitization checks, allowing malicious actors to flood networks with resource-intensive invalid data.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents a severe threat to network stability and availability as attackers can fill victim nodes' disk storage and memory resources with invalid data structures. The attack requires no stake or computational investment from the perpetrator, making it particularly dangerous as it can be executed by anyone with network access. The resource exhaustion occurs at multiple levels including memory allocation for data structures and disk space consumption for storing invalid blocks, effectively rendering affected nodes unable to function properly and potentially causing network partitioning or complete service disruption.
The vulnerability aligns with CWE-129 and CWE-131 categories related to input validation and buffer overflow conditions, representing a classic example of insufficient validation of input data. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to T1499.004 (Network Denial of Service) and T1566.002 (Phishing with Social Engineering) as attackers can exploit the protocol's weaknesses to cause service disruption. The attack pattern demonstrates how protocol-level flaws can be leveraged to create cascading failures in distributed systems, particularly in cryptocurrency networks where node availability directly impacts network functionality and security.
Mitigation strategies should include implementing comprehensive input validation mechanisms that reject malformed headers and blocks before processing, establishing rate limiting controls to prevent excessive resource consumption, and deploying network monitoring solutions to detect anomalous traffic patterns. Additionally, network administrators should consider implementing automated node health monitoring and resource allocation controls to prevent single points of failure. The fix requires protocol-level modifications to strengthen validation routines and ensure that all incoming data is properly sanitized before being accepted into the blockchain processing pipeline.