CVE-2022-23507 MEDIUM

CVE-2022-23507: Light client verification not taking into account chain ID

Vendor Informalsystems
Product tendermint-rs
Weakness CWE-347
Published December 15, 2022
Last update April 18, 2025

CVSS base score

5.4/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity High
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Confidentiality Low
Integrity Low

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

What the vulnerability does

01Description

Tendermint is a high-performance blockchain consensus engine for Byzantine fault tolerant applications. Versions prior to 0.28.0 contain a potential attack via Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature, affecting anyone using the tendermint-light-client and related packages to perform light client verification (e.g. IBC-rs, Hermes). The light client does not check that the chain IDs of the trusted and untrusted headers match, resulting in a possible attack vector where someone who finds a header from an untrusted chain that satisfies all other verification conditions (e.g. enough overlapping validator signatures) could fool a light client. The attack vector is currently theoretical, and no proof-of-concept exists yet to exploit it on live networks. This issue is patched in version 0.28.0. There are no workarounds.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

December 15, 2022 CVE published
April 18, 2025 Record updated