NRDAX-T0205 - Pre-Handshake Crypto CPU Burn

Compute amplification · P2P and gossip · late bound · active · first seen 2022-01-01

provenance: Reproduced in NullRabbit's attack-reproduction pipeline

mechanism

Bitcoin Core BIP-324 v2 transport pre-auth CPU burn: the 64-byte inbound ellswift key triggers secp256k1 ellswift ECDH + HKDF-SHA256 BEFORE any auth/rate-limit; only the soft 125-inbound cap gates, accept path single-threaded. Churn of 64-byte-key connections pins a core. Measured HIGH on Bitcoin Core (55x p50/256x p99 honest-peer latency at 4 IPs) + Qtum; default-on since Core 27.0. NullRabbit measurement; chains/bitcoin/findings/BTC_V0_BIP324_PREHANDSHAKE_CPU.

live exposure

No exposure data. Slashr ↗ has no risk signal mapped to this technique yet — absence of data is not absence of exposure.

research

In-depth write-ups of this attack on nullrabbit.ai.

Casper P2P TLS-1.3 P-521 pre-auth ECDSA verify burn ↗

How CometBFT's SecretConnection handshake spends CPU before authenticating the peer ↗

Qtum BIP-324 Pre-Authentication ECDH CPU Exhaustion ↗

instances (9)

chain	primitive	fidelity	origin	reproducer (bundle)	source
bitcoin	btc_bip324_prehandshake_ecdh_cpu	lab	NullRabbit Labs	btc_bip324_prehandshake_ecdh_cpu	github.com ↗
casper	casper_p521_preauth_verify_burn	lab	NullRabbit Labs	casper_p521_preauth_verify_burn	-
conflux	cfx_ecies_preauth_ecdh_burn	lab	NullRabbit Labs	cfx_ecies_preauth_ecdh_burn	-
cosmos	cometbft_mconn_handshake_burn	lab	NullRabbit Labs	cometbft_mconn_handshake_burn	github.com ↗
icon	icon_goloop_preauth_ecdh_burn	lab	NullRabbit Labs	icon_goloop_preauth_ecdh_burn	-
libp2p	go_libp2p_oversized_rsa_key_cpu_burn	lab	reverse-engineered-cve	go_libp2p_oversized_rsa_key_cpu_burn	GHSA-876p-8259-xjgg ↗
polygon-pos	heimdall_mconn_handshake_burn	lab	NullRabbit Labs	heimdall_mconn_handshake_burn	-
qtum	qtum_bip324_prehandshake_ecdh_cpu	lab	NullRabbit Labs	qtum_bip324_prehandshake_ecdh_cpu	github.com ↗
xrp	rippled_overlay_handshake_ecdsa_burn	lab	NullRabbit Labs	rippled_overlay_handshake_ecdsa_burn	github.com ↗

related (Compute amplification)

NRDAX-T0006 - Async Runtime Blocking VM Execution active NRDAX-T0076 - Expensive Debug RPC Compute Amplification active NRDAX-T0088 - GetData Request Flood active NRDAX-T0100 - Handshake Crypto CPU Burn active NRDAX-T0139 - Legacy Sighash Quadratic CPU Blowup active NRDAX-T0143 - Malformed Field Gossip Before Validation active NRDAX-T0148 - Malformed KZG Proof Mismatch DoS active NRDAX-T0166 - Move Verifier Fixpoint CPU Exhaustion active

cite

https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0205

plain

NRDAX Registry. Technique NRDAX-T0205.

bibtex

@misc{nrdax_NRDAX_T0205,
  title = {Pre-Handshake Crypto CPU Burn (NRDAX-T0205)},
  howpublished = {NRDAX Registry},
  url = {https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0205},
}

json (csl)

{
  "id": "nrdax-NRDAX-T0205",
  "type": "dataset",
  "title": "Pre-Handshake Crypto CPU Burn (NRDAX-T0205)",
  "URL": "https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0205",
  "publisher": "NRDAX Registry"
}

badge

[![NRDAX-T0205 in the NRDAX registry](https://nrdax.com/badge/NRDAX-T0205.svg)](https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0205-pre-handshake-crypto-cpu-burn)

use from the CLI

Retrieve or cite this technique from a script or the terminal with the NRDAX Python library & CLI.

Retrieve this technique

nrdax get NRDAX-T0205

Cite it (BibTeX)

nrdax cite NRDAX-T0205 --format bibtex

CLI guide → GitHub ↗