NRDAX-T0071 - Ethash Verification Memory Exhaustion

memory_amp · active · first seen 2026-07-09

provenance: Reproduced in NullRabbit's attack-reproduction pipeline

mechanism

CVE-2021-42219: go-ethereum v1.10.9 (and earlier pre-Merge ethash-verifying geth) - an unauthenticated remote peer floods a node with an excessive amount of block/header messages; to verify each block

instances (1)

chain	primitive	fidelity	origin	reproducer (bundle)	source
ethereum	geth_ethash_memory_exhaustion_dos	lab	reverse-engineered-cve	geth_ethash_memory_exhaustion_dos	CVE-2021-42219 — https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-42219 (MITRE: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2021-42219). go-ethereum v1.10.9 remote DoS: an excessive amount of block/header messages to a node drives repeated ethash cache generation in consensus/ethash/algorithm.go -> memory exhaustion. CVSS 3.1 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H). No vendor GHSA (third-party exploit-doc ref).

related (memory_amp)

NRDAX-T0023 - Coalesced Packet Buffer Leak active NRDAX-T0025 - Compact Block Size Integer Overflow active NRDAX-T0038 - Count Underflow Header Serving Amplification active NRDAX-T0042 - Crypto Frame Reassembly Buffer Exhaustion active NRDAX-T0046 - Decompression Bomb Resource Exhaustion active NRDAX-T0059 - Duplicate Transport Parameter Memory Leak active NRDAX-T0061 - Duplicate Tx Mempool Index Desync active NRDAX-T0095 - GraphQL Alias Query Amplification active

cite

https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0071

plain

NRDAX Registry. Technique NRDAX-T0071.

bibtex

@misc{nrdax_NRDAX_T0071,
  title = {Ethash Verification Memory Exhaustion (NRDAX-T0071)},
  howpublished = {NRDAX Registry},
  url = {https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0071},
}

json (csl)

{
  "id": "nrdax-NRDAX-T0071",
  "type": "dataset",
  "title": "Ethash Verification Memory Exhaustion (NRDAX-T0071)",
  "URL": "https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0071",
  "publisher": "NRDAX Registry"
}