Ethereum go-ethereum up to 1.16.8 /geth/nodekey information exposure

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability has been found in Ethereum go-ethereum up to 1.16.8 and classified as problematic. This issue affects some unknown processing of the file /geth/nodekey. The manipulation leads to information exposure. This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2026-26315. The attack can be initiated remotely. There is not any exploit available. The affected component should be upgraded.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Ethereum go-ethereum up to 1.16.8. It has been rated as problematic. This issue affects an unknown part of the file /geth/nodekey. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a information exposure vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-203. The product behaves differently or sends different responses under different circumstances in a way that is observable to an unauthorized actor, which exposes security-relevant information about the state of the product, such as whether a particular operation was successful or not. Impacted is confidentiality. The summary by CVE is:

go-ethereum (Geth) is a golang execution layer implementation of the Ethereum protocol. Prior to version 1.16.9, through a flaw in the ECIES cryptography implementation, an attacker may be able to extract bits of the p2p node key. The issue is resolved in the v1.16.9 and v1.17.0 releases of Geth. Geth maintainers recommend rotating the node key after applying the upgrade, which can be done by removing the file `<datadir>/geth/nodekey` before starting Geth.

The advisory is shared at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-26315 since 02/13/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is needed for a successful exploitation. Technical details are known, but no exploit is available. MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1592 for this issue.

Upgrading to version 1.16.9 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• Ethereum

Name

• go-ethereum

Version

• 1.16.0
• 1.16.1
• 1.16.2
• 1.16.3
• 1.16.4
• 1.16.5
• 1.16.6
• 1.16.7
• 1.16.8

Website

• Product: https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/

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