Security Resilience

CVE-2026-73541

DoS in Zenhive Machine Payments Protocol 0.2.0 – 0.12.0

Published
19 August 2026
Modified
10 September 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v4 8.3
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/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 0.0059 48th percentile
Risk Priority 44 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). EPSS, Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), epss.first.org. Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2026-73541 is a high-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Zenhive Machine Payments Protocol. Its CVSS base score is 8.3 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique SMS Pumping (T1496.003); ranked at the 48th 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.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in ZenHive mpp allows an unauthenticated remote client to drain the fee-payer wallet through concurrent sponsored payments, denying service to legitimate payers once it is empty. MPP.Methods.Tempo.FeePayerPolicy enforces its ceilings (max_gas, max_fee_per_gas, max_priority_fee_per_gas,…

more

the worst-case gas_limit * max_fee_per_gas <= max_total_fee budget cap, and a validity window) against one transaction at a time, and nothing accounts for exposure across concurrent requests. reserve_hash_atomic/2 is keyed on the transaction hash, so it prevents duplicate broadcast of the same signed transaction but not N distinct sponsored transactions carrying distinct expiring nonces. Committed sponsor exposure is therefore N times max_total_fee, bounded by nothing in the library, and the default 900 second validity window lets co-signed transactions stay broadcastable and uncounted for that entire period. This issue affects mpp: from 0.2.0 before 0.12.0.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

MITRE ATT&CK v20.0

T1496.003 SMS Pumping Impact
Adversaries may leverage messaging services for SMS pumping, which may impact system and/or hosted service availability.
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.
T1499.001 OS Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may launch a denial of service (DoS) attack targeting an endpoint's operating system (OS).
T1499.002 Service Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target the different network services provided by systems to conduct a denial of service (DoS).
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.
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.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-73136Same product: Zenhive Machine Payments Protocol
CVE-2026-67581Same product: Zenhive Machine Payments Protocol
CVE-2026-111101Shared CWE-770
CVE-2023-27901Shared CWE-770
CVE-2024-52920Shared CWE-770
CVE-2026-102464Shared CWE-770
CVE-2026-41648Shared CWE-770
CVE-2024-52805Shared CWE-770
CVE-2024-7734Shared CWE-770
CVE-2026-27979Shared CWE-770

Affected Assets

zenhive
machine payments protocol
0.2.0 — 0.12.0

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

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Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

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

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Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)

Our mappings, made for this CVE.

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)

Our mappings, derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our CWE→CSF cross-walk — links open the control.

PR.IR-04 partial match
blocks

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

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A)

Our mappings, derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our CWE→ISO cross-walk — links open the control.

finds

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

finds

A.8.29's combined programme of code review, static analysis, dynamic testing and penetration testing reaches CWE-770 through both SOURCE and RUNTIME: missing throttling, unbounded allocation loops and absent connection limits are patterns static analysis and code review surface, and DoS-style stress testing catches them at runtime. The remainder is bounded and nameable — limits that exist but are set too high for the deployment context, race conditions in resource accounting, and design-level decisions about whether a limit belongs at all — which keeps this below the `full` rung A.8.29 reaches on CWE-89.

prevents

A.8.28 mandates secure coding practices — threat modelling, coding standards, peer review, knowledge of common defects — that can catch missing resource limits before code ships, but it is a fallible human practice whose coverage depends on implementer rigour, leaving a nameable remainder that A.8.29 testing reaches more reliably.

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 our cross-walk; rows rated `none` are excluded, and each rule says how its mapping was checked.

Definition changed on 29 October 2026. Until then this section listed every rule rated above none, partial included. From that date it lists rules whose mapping is rated full or mostly and checked at llm_unverified or higher; partial mappings show when you ask.

Oracle Linux 8 (1 rule, 1 more partial)
  • V-248552 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. blocks 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. blocks CWE-770
Oracle Linux 9 (1 rule, 1 more partial)
  • V-271710 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770
  • V-271709 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. blocks 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. blocks CWE-770

References