Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-26313

DoS in Go Ethereum ≤ 1.17.0

Published
19 February 2026
Modified
23 February 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v4 6.9
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/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 0.0058 45th percentile
Risk Priority 42 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-26313 is a medium-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Ethereum Go Ethereum. Its CVSS base score is 6.9 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Network Denial of Service (T1498); ranked at the 45th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-10 (Concurrent Session Control) and SC-6 (Resource Availability) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary

Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.

CVE-2026-26313 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in go-ethereum (geth), a Golang implementation of the Ethereum protocol's execution layer. Versions prior to 1.17.0 are affected, where an attacker can trigger high memory usage by sending a specially-crafted peer-to-peer (P2P) message. The flaw stems from CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling) and 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), indicating high availability impact through resource exhaustion.

Any unauthenticated attacker with network access can exploit this vulnerability due to its low attack complexity and lack of required privileges or user interaction. By transmitting the malicious P2P message to a vulnerable geth node, the attacker causes excessive memory allocation, potentially leading to node instability, crashes, or complete denial of service for Ethereum network participants relying on the affected instance.

The vulnerability is fully resolved in go-ethereum version 1.17.0. Administrators should upgrade to this release or later to mitigate the issue. Additional details are available in the official release notes at https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/releases/tag/v1.17.0 and the GitHub security advisory at https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/security/advisories/GHSA-689v-6xwf-5jf3.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

go-ethereum (geth) is a golang execution layer implementation of the Ethereum protocol. Prior to version 1.17.0, an attacker can cause high memory usage by sending a specially-crafted p2p message. The issue is resolved in the v1.17.0 release.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1498 Network Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Network Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of targeted resources to users.
T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.003 Application Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target resource intensive features of applications to cause a denial of service (DoS), denying availability to those applications.
T1498.001 Direct Network Flood Impact
Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by directly sending a high-volume of network traffic to a target.
T1498.002 Reflection Amplification Impact
Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by reflecting a high-volume of network traffic to a target.
T1499.001 OS Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may launch a denial of service (DoS) attack targeting an endpoint's operating system (OS).
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-40591Same product: Ethereum Go Ethereum
CVE-2026-22862Same product: Ethereum Go Ethereum
CVE-2026-22868Same product: Ethereum Go Ethereum
CVE-2026-26314Same product: Ethereum Go Ethereum
CVE-2026-26315Same product: Ethereum Go Ethereum
CVE-2023-42319Same product: Ethereum Go Ethereum
CVE-2025-5253Shared CWE-770
CVE-2026-20103Shared CWE-770
CVE-2024-31881Shared CWE-770
CVE-2024-32871Shared CWE-770

Affected Assets

ethereum
go ethereum
≤ 1.17.0

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 5 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V15.4.4

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Directly enforces a hard limit on concurrent sessions, structurally preventing unbounded resource allocation.

Requires explicit allocation of resources by priority or quota, directly stopping unlimited allocation.

Imposes a limit on consecutive invalid attempts, preventing one specific class of unbounded resource consumption.

Reduces impact of resulting DoS events without preventing the underlying lack of allocation limits.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.IR-04 mostly match
degrades

Monitoring capacity and taking action to maintain availability directly reduces unchecked resource allocation.

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.

finds

Baseline comparison of CPU, memory and bandwidth usage helps surface uncontrolled resource allocations before they cause service degradation.

prevents

Capacity projections and elasticity measures ensure that allocation requests are bounded and can be throttled, reducing the window in which an attacker can force unbounded resource reservations.

mitigates

Defining retention periods and deletion schedules for backup copies prevents indefinite accumulation of data on storage media without corresponding resource-management controls.

mitigates

Architectural redundancy and automatic failover limit the impact of an attacker who forces excessive allocations, because spare capacity can absorb the load until the primary instance recovers.

none

Documented incident response procedures that include activation of continuity plans and controlled recovery help ensure that resource consumption triggered by an incident is bounded and managed rather than left unbounded.

mitigates

Mandating tested continuity procedures that preserve or replace resource-limiting controls prevents an attacker from exploiting the absence of throttling mechanisms during an outage.

Hardening callouts derived

Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).

Oracle Linux 8 (2 rules)
  • V-248552 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
  • V-248553 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
Oracle Linux 9 (2 rules)
  • V-271710 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
  • V-271709 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
RHEL 8 (1 rule)
  • V-230244 RHEL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770

References