CVE-2023-28431CWE-682

Frontier's modexp precompile is slow for even modulus

High · published March 22, 2023

CVSS v3.1
7.5
EPSS
1%
Percentile
58.5
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

Frontier is an Ethereum compatibility layer for Substrate. Frontier's `modexp` precompile uses `num-bigint` crate under the hood. In the implementation prior to pull request 1017, the cases for modulus being even and modulus being odd are treated separately. Odd modulus uses the fast Montgomery multiplication, and even modulus uses the slow plain power algorithm. This gas cost discrepancy was not accounted for in the `modexp` precompile, leading to possible denial of service attacks.

No fixes for `num-bigint` are currently available, and thus this issue is fixed in the short term by raising the gas costs for even modulus, and in the long term fixing it in `num-bigint` or switching to another modexp implementation. The short-term fix for Frontier is deployed at pull request 1017. There are no known workarounds aside from applying the fix.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
7.5 · HIGH
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00873 · 58.5th percentile
Weakness
CWE-682 · Incorrect Calculation
Published
2023-03-22T20:11Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 22 MAR 20:11Z
    Frontier's modexp precompile is slow for even modulus
    cvelistv5