NRDAX-T0398 - Unauthenticated Crypto Signing CPU Exhaustion

mechanism

The bridge signing server exposes its request-handling routes over plain HTTP with no authentication, no per-IP rate limit, and no concurrency/timeout cap - the only middleware layer checks body size, not request rate. An attacker sends cheap unauthenticated GETs to the signing endpoint, each of which the handler expands into backend RPC round-trips (fetch+verify) before signing, so request volume translates directly into backend work with no admission control to shed excess load. This lets a modest unauthenticated flood exhaust the signer's handling capacity, denying enough validators from completing signature assembly to halt the quorum (availability/censorship, not forgery).

instances (1)

cite

https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0398

@misc{nrdax_NRDAX_T0398,
  title = {Unauthenticated Crypto Signing CPU Exhaustion (NRDAX-T0398)},
  howpublished = {NRDAX Registry},
  url = {https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0398},
}

{
  "id": "nrdax-NRDAX-T0398",
  "type": "dataset",
  "title": "Unauthenticated Crypto Signing CPU Exhaustion (NRDAX-T0398)",
  "URL": "https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0398",
  "publisher": "NRDAX Registry"
}

[![NRDAX-T0398 in the NRDAX registry](https://nrdax.com/badge/NRDAX-T0398.svg)](https://nrdax.com/techniques/NRDAX-T0398-unauthenticated-crypto-signing-cpu-exhaustion)