GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Go
GHSA-xc79-566c-j4qx Parallax is vulnerable to DoS via malicious p2p message
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Ecosystem
- Go
- Packages
- github.com/microstack-tech/parallax
- Severity
- High
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-400
- Reviewed
- 2025-10-10
Affected packages
• Go github.com/microstack-tech/parallax: < 0.1.4 → fixed in 0.1.4
Description
Impact
A vulnerable node can be made to consume very large amounts of memory when handling specially crafted p2p messages sent from an attacker node.
In order to carry out the attack, the attacker establishes a peer connections to the victim, and sends a malicious `GetBlockHeadersRequest` message with a `count` of `0`, using the `Parallax` protocol.
In `descendants := chain.GetHeadersFrom(num+count-1, count-1)`, the value of `count-1` is passed to the function `GetHeadersFrom(number, count uint64)` as parameter `count`. Due to integer overflow, `UINT64_MAX` value is then passed as the `count` argument to function `GetHeadersFrom(number, count uint64)`. This allows an attacker to bypass `maxHeadersServe` and request all headers from the latest block back to the genesis block.
Patches
The fix has been included in the Parallax client version `0.1.4` and onwards.
The vulnerability was patched in: https://github.com/microstack-tech/parallax/commit/f759e9090aaf00a43c616d7cbd133c44bb1ed01e
Workarounds
No workarounds have been made public.
Credit
This issue was disclosed responsibly by DongHan Kim via the Ethereum bug bounty program, the cooperation is appreciated.
Related
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption weakness
References
- https://github.com/microstack-tech/parallax/security/advisories/GHSA-xc79-566c-j4qx web
- https://github.com/microstack-tech/parallax/commit/f759e9090aaf00a43c616d7cbd133c44bb1ed01e web
- https://github.com/microstack-tech/parallax package
- https://github.com/microstack-tech/parallax/releases/tag/v0.1.4 web
- https://pkg.go.dev/vuln/GO-2025-4019 web