Deserialization of Untrusted Data in EthereumJ

published 2019-06-20 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-hf4p-jm7r-vjjj , EUVD-2019-0592

cvss: 9.8; version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 2.9%; EPSS 2.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 87%
public exploits: 0; none known

An issue was discovered in EthereumJ 1.8.2. There is Unsafe Deserialization in ois.readObject in mine/Ethash.java and decoder.readObject in crypto/ECKey.java. When a node syncs and mines a new block, arbitrary OS commands can be run on the server.

Exploit prediction

2.95% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 87% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

github.com https://github.com/frohoff/ysoserial/ referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
github.com https://github.com/ethereum/ethereumj/issues/1161 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.0	9.8	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	10.0	AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
GitHub	3.0	9.8	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
maven	org.ethereum:ethereumj-core	<=1.12.0	no fix listed

Classification

Weakness

CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data

References

github.com /frohoff/ysoserial/
exploit, third-party-advisory
github.com /ethereum/ethereumj/issues/1161
web, exploit, issue-tracking, third-party-advisory
github.com /ethereum/ethereumj
web, product
nvd.nist.gov /vuln/detail/CVE-2018-15890
advisory
github.com /frohoff/ysoserial
web

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary