CVE-2021-41138

Validity check for signed Frontier-specific extrinsic not called in block execution

MEDIUM
5.3
CVSS Score
Published: October 13, 2021 at 03:15 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 04:07 AM UTC
2 products affected across 2 vendorsFrontierFrontier

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Severity
MEDIUM5.3
Exploit prediction
EPSS 1%

Description

Frontier is Substrate's Ethereum compatibility layer. In the newly introduced signed Frontier-specific extrinsic for `pallet-ethereum`, a large part of transaction validation logic was only called in transaction pool validation, but not in block execution. Malicious validators can take advantage of this to put invalid transactions into a block. The attack is limited in that the signature is always validated, and the majority of the validation is done again in the subsequent `pallet-evm` execution logic. However, do note that a chain ID replay attack was possible. In addition, spamming attacks are of main concerns, while they are limited by Substrate block size limits and other factors. The issue is patched in commit `146bb48849e5393004be5c88beefe76fdf009aba`.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

2021-09-30 ≤ v < 2021-10-13
Affected range stops below 2021-10-13, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
v < 146bb48
Affected range stops below 146bb48, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

CVSS

5.3MEDIUMGitHub_M
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
LOW
Availability
NONE
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-20

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