CVE-2026-22868

High

Published: 13 January 2026

Published

13 January 2026

Modified

29 January 2026

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score v4 7.1 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

EPSS Score 0.0003 10.9th percentile

Risk Priority 14 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2026-22868 is a high-severity Improper Input Validation (CWE-20) vulnerability in Ethereum Go Ethereum. Its CVSS base score is 7.1 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 10.9th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation).

Deeper analysis

CVE-2026-22868 affects go-ethereum (geth), a Golang implementation of the Ethereum protocol's execution layer. The vulnerability enables a specially crafted message to force a vulnerable node to shut down or crash, stemming from improper input validation (CWE-20). It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H), highlighting high-impact availability disruption with no confidentiality or integrity effects.

Any network-accessible attacker can exploit this without privileges, user interaction, or elevated complexity by sending the malicious message to a vulnerable geth node, resulting in denial-of-service through node shutdown or crash.

The vulnerability is fixed in go-ethereum version 1.16.8. For mitigation details, refer to the patching commit at https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/commit/abeb78c647e354ed922726a1d719ac7bc64a07e2 and the security advisory at https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/security/advisories/GHSA-mq3p-rrmp-79jg.

EU & UK References

🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-2010

Vulnerability details

go-ethereum (geth) is a golang execution layer implementation of the Ethereum protocol. A vulnerable node can be forced to shutdown/crash using a specially crafted message. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.16.8.

CWE(s): CWE-20

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.

attack.mitre.org →

Why these techniques?

Remote crafted message exploits improper input validation in public-facing geth node, directly enabling application-layer DoS via exploitation (T1499.004).

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v18.1