Authenticated node crash via UTF-8 slicing
Published Aug 18, 2026 · Updated Aug 18, 2026
Denial of service in Zcash Foundation Zebra before 4.5.0 allows remote authenticated users to crash the node via a crafted LongPollId. The zebra-rpc getblocktemplate handler passes the user-supplied LongPollId to LongPollId::from_str, which slices fixed byte ranges from a UTF-8 string after checking only total byte length; a slice that lands inside a multibyte character panics with a char-boundary error. Reachability requires an enabled RPC listener and valid RPC authentication unless cookie auth is disabled; because release builds set panic to abort, one malformed request terminates the entire zebrad process and can be repeated after restart.
Summary
What happened
Denial of service in Zcash Foundation Zebra before 4.5.0 allows remote authenticated users to crash the node via a crafted LongPollId. The zebra-rpc getblocktemplate handler passes the user-supplied LongPollId to LongPollId::from_str, which slices fixed byte ranges from a UTF-8 string after checking only total byte length; a slice that lands inside a multibyte character panics with a char-boundary error. Reachability requires an enabled RPC listener and valid RPC authentication unless cookie auth is disabled; because release builds set panic to abort, one malformed request terminates the entire zebrad process and can be repeated after restart.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-52731
- Published
- Aug 18, 2026
- Updated
- Aug 18, 2026
- Vendor
- Zcash Foundation
- Product
- Zebra
- Classifications
- CWE-248, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Aug 18, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Aug 18, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
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Is a vulnerable build present?
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- Affected versionversion=< 4.5.0
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What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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Attacks
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Technologies
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Your stack
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