Executive brief
Hyperledger Indy Node is a blockchain node implementation used in distributed ledger networks. A malformed transaction containing an invalid TAA (Transaction Author Agreement) can crash the current primary node and trigger a view change, causing consensus failures. Repeated attacks could render the entire network unable to process write transactions, disrupting all network participants.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an uncontrolled resource consumption flaw (CWE-400) in the TAA (Transaction Author Agreement) handling code of Indy Node. When a client sends a malformed transaction with an invalid TAA, the primary node fails to validate it correctly and crashes, triggering a consensus view change. An unauthenticated network-reachable attacker can repeatedly send malformed TAA transactions to trigger cascading view changes that degrade or eliminate network consensus. The bug was fixed in version 1.12.3, released shortly after discovery on the Sovrin network in May 2020.
Affected products
- Hyperledger Indy Node 1.12.2
Timeline
- 2020-06-08: disclosed
- 2020-06-11: patched: Fixed in version 1.12.3
- 2020-05-18: exploited: Discovered in wild on Sovrin StagingNet