NRDAX-T0353 - Unvalidated Header Buffer OOM

Memory amplification · P2P and gossip · no bound · active · first seen 2026-01-01

provenance: Reproduced in NullRabbit's attack-reproduction pipeline

mechanism

CVE-2024-52916: difficulty-1 headers with parent=genesis → mapBlockIndex unbounded growth → memory DoS

live exposure

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

instances (3)

chain	primitive	fidelity	origin	reproducer (bundle)	source
bitcoin	btc_headers_genesis_spam	lab	reverse-engineered-cve	btc_headers_genesis_spam	bitcoincore.org ↗
bitcoin	btc_headers_oom	lab	reverse-engineered-cve	btc_headers_oom	bitcoincore.org ↗
conflux	conflux_newblock_header_custom_oom	lab	reverse-engineered-cve	conflux_newblock_header_custom_oom	github.com ↗

related (Memory amplification)

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-T0071 - Ethash Verification Memory Exhaustion active

cite

https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0353

plain

NRDAX Registry. Technique NRDAX-T0353.

bibtex

@misc{nrdax_NRDAX_T0353,
  title = {Unvalidated Header Buffer OOM (NRDAX-T0353)},
  howpublished = {NRDAX Registry},
  url = {https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0353},
}

json (csl)

{
  "id": "nrdax-NRDAX-T0353",
  "type": "dataset",
  "title": "Unvalidated Header Buffer OOM (NRDAX-T0353)",
  "URL": "https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0353",
  "publisher": "NRDAX Registry"
}

badge

[![NRDAX-T0353 in the NRDAX registry](https://nrdax.com/badge/NRDAX-T0353.svg)](https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0353-unvalidated-header-buffer-oom)

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-T0353

Cite it (BibTeX)

nrdax cite NRDAX-T0353 --format bibtex

CLI guide → GitHub ↗