Nervos CKB Unaligned Pointer Dereference

Exploitation

No confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next marks exploitation only from CISA KEV.

CVSS

not scored

EPSS

No dated EPSS signal available.

As published by the source; long descriptions are shortened.

via bounty@nervos.org There are multiple type conversions in ckb that unsafely cast between byte pointers and other types of pointers. This results in unaligned pointers, which are not allowed by the Rust language, and are considered undefined behavior, meaning that the compiler is free to do anything with code. This can lead to unpredictable bugs that can become security vulnerabilities. Some of the bugs here could potentially lead to buffer overreads in malformed data (it's not clear to me as I haven't investigated the practical impact of these bugs). Two of these (in blockchain.rs) do not create unaligned data. They do though perform an unsafe operation that may not uphold the invariants of the safe function they are in, and could lead to undefined behavior and buffer overreads on malformed input. These are of the same nature as those in my previous report about the molecule crate. Patch attached for commit 1b09e37c8e1b7945495cd18d9782417fbe51e986 that fixes all cases I know of at…

Published by the source

2 Feb 2024, 20:59 UTC

Last modified by the source

2 Feb 2024, 20:59 UTC

Source last checked

26 Oct 2026, 15:38 UTC

1. Revision 1 · created · 26 Oct 2026

   Published from ghsa record GHSA-q669-2vfg-cxcg

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# Patch Next advisory brief: GHSA-q669-2vfg-cxcg

Advisory: Nervos CKB Unaligned Pointer Dereference
IDs: GHSA-q669-2vfg-cxcg
Record: https://patchnext.com/advisories/ghsa-q669-2vfg-cxcg (revision 1, source checked 26 Oct 2026, 15:38 UTC)
Inventory: none attached. This brief comes from a public page and does not say whether any deployment is affected.
Severity: Unrated
Exploitation: no confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next confirms exploitation only from CISA KEV.
Vendor response: Vendor fix available; fixed versions by package: ckb 0.31.1. A vendor fix does not mean a deployment is fixed.

## Affected components
- crates.io ckb: affected <= 0.31.0; fixed in 0.31.1

## Suggested inspection (read-only)
- crates.io ckb: check the installed version with your package manager.

## Supported action
Upgrade each affected component to a fixed version on its release line. For a transitive dependency, upgrade the parent package or add an override or constraint, then regenerate the lockfile. Redeploy every environment that ran an affected version.

## Required regression checks
- Run the test suite and a production build.
- Exercise the features that depend on ckb.
- Repeat the inspection and confirm that only fixed versions remain installed.

## Rollback considerations
- Keep the previous lockfile and deployment artifact. Rolling back reinstates the vulnerable version, so apply any documented mitigation while you fix forward.

## Unresolved questions
- Which deployments run an affected version?
- Exploitation status can change. Check again before lowering the priority.
- Mark the work resolved only after the fixed version is verified in production.

## Sources
- Verified: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-q669-2vfg-cxcg (GitHub-reviewed advisory GHSA-q669-2vfg-cxcg lists affected ranges: crates.io ckb >=0 <=0.31.0)

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