CWE-252

Unchecked Return Value

The product does not check the return value from a method or function, which can prevent it from detecting unexpected states and conditions.

CVE-2026-40092 (GCVE-0-2026-40092)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-05-20 21:16 – Updated: 2026-05-21 12:23
VLAI
Title
nimiq-keys: Unchecked Ed25519 signature length in TaggedPublicKey::verify causes remote node panic via DHT
Summary
nimiq-blockchain provides persistent block storage for Nimiq's Rust implementation. In versions 1.3.0 and below, a malicious network peer can crash any Nimiq full node by publishing a crafted Kademlia DHT record. The maliciously crafted record would contain a TaggedSigned<ValidatorRecord, KeyPair> with a signature field whose byte length is not exactly 64 in order to cause a crash. When the victim node's DHT verifier calls TaggedSigned::verify, execution reaches Ed25519Signature::from_bytes(sig).unwrap() in the TaggedPublicKey implementation for Ed25519PublicKey. The from_bytes call fails because ed25519_zebra::Signature::try_from rejects slices not 64 bytes, and the unwrap() panics. The BLS TaggedPublicKey implementation correctly returns false on error; only the Ed25519 implementation panics. This issue has been fixed in version 1.4.0.
Severity
7.5 (High)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE
Assigner
References
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version
nimiq core-rs-albatross Affected: < 1.4.0
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Mitigation ID: MIT-53

Phase: Implementation

Description:

  • Check the results of all functions that return a value and verify that the value is expected.
Mitigation ID: MIT-56

Phase: Implementation

Description:

  • For any pointers that could have been modified or provided from a function that can return NULL, check the pointer for NULL before use. When working with a multithreaded or otherwise asynchronous environment, ensure that proper locking APIs are used to lock before the check, and unlock when it has finished [REF-1484].
Mitigation

Phase: Implementation

Description:

  • Ensure that you account for all possible return values from the function.
Mitigation

Phase: Implementation

Description:

  • When designing a function, make sure you return a value or throw an exception in case of an error.

No CAPEC attack patterns related to this CWE.

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