Signature malleability via noncanonical DER integers
Published Aug 2, 2024 · Updated Nov 3, 2025
ECDSA signature malleability in Elliptic 2.0.0 through 6.5.6 allows remote attackers to submit noncanonical signatures. The DER decoder in lib/elliptic/ec/signature.js accepts r or s integers whose high bit is set without the required leading zero byte. Reachability depends on a consuming application verifying attacker-controlled ECDSA signatures, and the demonstrated consequence is acceptance of an alternate encoding rather than signature forgery.
Summary
What happened
ECDSA signature malleability in Elliptic 2.0.0 through 6.5.6 allows remote attackers to submit noncanonical signatures. The DER decoder in lib/elliptic/ec/signature.js accepts r or s integers whose high bit is set without the required leading zero byte. Reachability depends on a consuming application verifying attacker-controlled ECDSA signatures, and the demonstrated consequence is acceptance of an alternate encoding rather than signature forgery.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2024-42460
- Published
- Aug 2, 2024
- Updated
- Nov 3, 2025
- Vendor
- Elliptic Project
- Product
- Elliptic
- Classifications
- CWE-130
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Aug 2, 2024CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Nov 3, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=6.5.6
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- Upstream malformed-DER ECDSA proof of conceptproof of concept · demonstrated
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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