Vulnerability · Published Jun 19, 2025 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2025-48886hydra-node dangerously assumes L1 event finality and does not consider failed transactions
Medium 4.8
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in hydra from cardano-scaling. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.3% (higher than 23% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
Hydra is a layer-two scalability solution for Cardano. Prior to version 0.22.0, the process assumes L1 event finality and does not consider failed transactions. Currently, Cardano L1 is monitored for certain events which are necessary for state progression. At the moment, Hydra considers those events as finalized as soon as they are recognized by the node participants making such transactions the target of re-org attacks. The system does not currently consider the fact that failed transactions on the Cardano L1 can indeed appear in blocks because these transactions are so infrequent. This issue has been patched in version 0.22.0.
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| cardano-scaling | hydra | < 0.22.0 |
Weakness: CWE-755 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
References
- https://github.com/cardano-scaling/hydra/security/advisories/GHSA-qr9f-mpgf-wp25 x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/cardano-scaling/hydra/commit/2bc6a82ef6dbfa8b94e1c11d55253713065f605e x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/cardano-scaling/hydra/commit/fb22d968964bf5d5b79227cc845d871147044ce7 x_refsource_MISC