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TI-2025-34232 Aliases CVE-2025-54427

Polkadot Frontier contains missing `check_inherent` for `note_min_gas_price_target` inflates gas price

Priority LOW 38CWE-682Published · Updated

Key facts

Attack vector
Network
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Attack complexity
Low
Attack requirements
None
Impact type
—
Confidentiality · integrity · availability
None · Low · Low
Fix status
No fix listed

Attack profile from CVSS 4.0 · CNA. Fix status from CNA.

Summary

Polkadot Frontier is an Ethereum and EVM compatibility layer for Polkadot and Substrate. The extrinsic note_min_gas_price_target is an inherent extrinsic, meaning only the block producer can call it. To ensure correctness, the ProvideInherent trait should be implemented for each inherent, which includes the check_inherent call. This allows other nodes to verify if the input (in this case, the target value) is correct. However, prior to commit a754b3d, the check_inherent function has not been implemented for note_min_gas_price_target. This lets the block producer set the target value without verification. The target is then used to set the MinGasPrice, which has an upper and lower bound defined in the on_initialize hook. The block producer can set the target to the upper bound. Which also increases the upper and lower bounds for the next block. Over time, this could result in continuously raising the gas price, making contract execution too expensive and ineffective for users. An attacker could use this flaw to manipulate the gas price, potentially leading to significantly inflated transaction fees. Such manipulation could render contract execution prohibitively expensive for users, effectively resulting in a denial-of-service condition for the network. This is fixed in version a754b3d.

Why it matters now

Exploitation None reported CISA SSVC · not in CISA KEV
EPSS 0.00663 51st percentileScored 2026-11-07
Fix No fix listed No fixed version in the sources yet

SSVC decision points

CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3

Exploitation
None
Automatable
Yes
Technical impact
Partial

The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.

Affected products

VendorProductAffected versionsFixed inStatusSource
polkadot-evmfrontier< a754b3d—No fix listedCNA
  • frontier Vendorpolkadot-evm Affected < a754b3d Fixed in — No fix listed CNA

Remediation

No fixed version listed by the sources yet.

Timeline

  1. 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2025-54427
  2. 2026-10-29 EPSS moved to the 50th–90th percentile

References

  • TI-2025-34231 Polkadot Frontier contains silent failure in Curve25519 arithmetic precompiles with malformed points CVSS 4.0CRITICAL 9.9
  • TI-2025-34234 Polkadot Frontier's constructing smart contract can bypass precompile address bounding CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.9

Sources

This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Sources and licences