A design flaw in all versions of Go-Ethereum allows an attacker node to send 5120 pending transactions of a high gas price from one account that all fully spend the full balance of the account to a victim Geth node, which can purge all of pending transactions in a victim nodes memory pool and then occupy the memory pool to prevent new transactions from entering the pool, resulting in a denial of service (DoS).
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go_ethereum | Ethereum | - (including) | - (including) |
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either:
The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question.
The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute – and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.