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TI-2021-04503 Aliases CVE-2021-21405GHSA-4g52-pqcj-phvh

BLS Signature "Malleability"

Priority LOW 35CWE-347Published · Updated

Key facts

Attack vector
Network
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Attack complexity
Low
Impact type
Security bypass
Confidentiality · integrity · availability
None · High · None
Fix status
Fixed

Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · NVD. Fix status from CNA and GitHub. Impact type from CWE-347.

Summary

Lotus is an Implementation of the Filecoin protocol written in Go. BLS signature validation in lotus uses blst library method VerifyCompressed. This method accepts signatures in 2 forms: "serialized", and "compressed", meaning that BLS signatures can be provided as either of 2 unique byte arrays. Lotus block validation functions perform a uniqueness check on provided blocks. Two blocks are considered distinct if the CIDs of their blockheader do not match. The CID method for blockheader includes the BlockSig of the block. The result of these issues is that it would be possible to punish miners for valid blocks, as there are two different valid block CIDs available for each block, even though this must be unique. By switching from the go based `blst` bindings over to the bindings in `filecoin-ffi`, the code paths now ensure that all signatures are compressed by size and the way they are deserialized. This happened in https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus/pull/5393.

Why it matters now

EPSS 0.00976 62nd percentileScored 2026-11-07
Public exploit Yes 1 exploit referenceTagged by NVD
Fix Fixed lotus (filecoin-project): 1.5.0github.com/filecoin-project/lotus (Go): 1.5.0

SSVC decision points

Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.

Affected products

VendorProductAffected versionsFixed inStatusSource
filecoin-projectlotusbefore 1.5.01.5.0Patch availableCNA
—github.com/filecoin-project/lotus (Go)before 1.5.01.5.0Patch availableGHSA-4g52-pqcj-phvh
  • lotus Vendorfilecoin-project Affected before 1.5.0 Fixed in 1.5.0 Patch available CNA
  • github.com/filecoin-project/lotus (Go) Vendor— Affected before 1.5.0 Fixed in 1.5.0 Patch available GHSA-4g52-pqcj-phvh

CPE configurations NVD · 1

CPEVersionsRoleVendor
cpe:2.3:a:filecoin:lotus:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*before 1.5.0Vulnerablefilecoin-project
  • cpe:2.3:a:filecoin:lotus:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* Versions before 1.5.0 Vulnerable ·filecoin-project

Remediation

  • Fix · CNA lotus (filecoin-project) Fixed in 1.5.0
  • Fix · GHSA-4g52-pqcj-phvh github.com/filecoin-project/lotus (Go) Fixed in 1.5.0 Advisory →

Timeline

  1. 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2021-21405
  2. 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-4g52-pqcj-phvh

References

Sources