Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 7.1

CVE-2023-46132 json

Crosslinking transaction attack in hyperledger/fabric

published 2023-11-14 2 y ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also BIT-hyperledger-fabric-orderer-2023-46132 , BIT-hyperledger-fabric-peer-2023-46132 , BIT-hyperledger-fabric-tools-2023-46132 , EUVD-2023-3042 , GHSA-v9w2-543f-h69m

cvss
7.1
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 44%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Hyperledger Fabric is an open source permissioned distributed ledger framework. Combining two molecules to one another, called "cross-linking" results in a molecule with a chemical formula that is composed of all atoms of the original two molecules. In Fabric, one can take a block of transactions and cross-link the transactions in a way that alters the way the peers parse the transactions. If a first peer receives a block B and a second peer receives a block identical to B but with the transactions being cross-linked, the second peer will parse transactions in a different way and thus its world state will deviate from the first peer. Orderers or peers cannot detect that a block has its transactions cross-linked, because there is a vulnerability in the way Fabric hashes the transactions of blocks. It simply and naively concatenates them, which is insecure and lets an adversary craft a "cross-linked block" (block with cross-linked transactions) which alters the way peers process transactions. For example, it is possible to select a transaction and manipulate a peer to completely avoid processing it, without changing the computed hash of the block. Additional validations have been added in v2.2.14 and v2.5.5 to detect potential cross-linking issues before processing blocks. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Patch / fix

  • go github.com/hyperledger/fabric 2.2.14, 2.5.5
  • bitnami hyperledger-fabric-orderer 2.2.14, 2.5.5
  • bitnami hyperledger-fabric-peer 2.2.14, 2.5.5
  • bitnami hyperledger-fabric-tools 2.2.14, 2.5.5
  • hyperledger fabric 2.2.14, 2.5.5

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.52% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 44% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric/security/advisories/GHSA-v9w2-543f-h69m referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L
GitHub 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L
NVD 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
OSV 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go github.com/hyperledger/fabric
>=1.0.0-alpha, <2.2.14
>=2.3.0, <2.5.5
2.2.14
2.5.5
bitnami hyperledger-fabric-orderer
>=1.0.0, <2.2.14
>=2.3.0, <2.5.5
2.2.14
2.5.5
bitnami hyperledger-fabric-peer
>=1.0.0, <2.2.14
>=2.3.0, <2.5.5
2.2.14
2.5.5
bitnami hyperledger-fabric-tools
>=1.0.0, <2.2.14
>=2.3.0, <2.5.5
2.2.14
2.5.5

Affected products

  • hyperledger fabric

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization

References

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.