CVE-2023-28431
Parity Frontier ≤ 2023-03-15
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2023-28431 is a high-severity Incorrect Calculation (CWE-682) vulnerability in Parity Frontier. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, ranked in the top 42% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-0996
Vulnerability Data
Frontier is an Ethereum compatibility layer for Substrate. Frontier's `modexp` precompile uses `num-bigint` crate under the hood. In the implementation prior to pull request 1017, the cases for modulus being even and modulus being odd are treated separately. Odd modulus…
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uses the fast Montgomery multiplication, and even modulus uses the slow plain power algorithm. This gas cost discrepancy was not accounted for in the `modexp` precompile, leading to possible denial of service attacks. No fixes for `num-bigint` are currently available, and thus this issue is fixed in the short term by raising the gas costs for even modulus, and in the long term fixing it in `num-bigint` or switching to another modexp implementation. The short-term fix for Frontier is deployed at pull request 1017. There are no known workarounds aside from applying the fix.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure development lifecycle mandates verification steps that catch incorrect calculations before they reach production.
A.8.26 requires that security requirements (including resilience against attacks such as buffer overflows or SQL injection) be identified during development or acquisition; it does not itself enforce correct calculations or stop an arithmetic error from being introduced or exploited.
A.8.27 mandates establishing and applying secure engineering principles (including secure-by-design, least privilege, and design reviews) but does not itself remove or rewrite an incorrect calculation already present in first-party code; that is a code defect class reached only by testing or remediation controls per the locus rule.
Secure coding standards directly prohibit unsafe arithmetic and require defensive checks against incorrect results.
Security testing in development and acceptance can detect calculation flaws before deployment.
Hardening callouts derived
DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.
- No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-682, a pillar-level weakness, and none of its children carries one either.