Vulnerability · Published Apr 3, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

CVE-2026-33184nimiq/core-rs-albatross: Discovery handshake limit could underflow and later provoke a deterministic overflow panic

High 7.5

In plain English

A high-severity security flaw in core-rs-albatross from nimiq. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.5% (higher than 42% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)7.5High
Exploit odds (30 days)0.5%top 58.5% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

nimiq/core-rs-albatross is a Rust implementation of the Nimiq Proof-of-Stake protocol based on the Albatross consensus algorithm. Prior to version 1.3.0, the discovery handler accepts a peer-controlled limit during handshake and stores it unchanged. The immediate HandshakeAck path then honors limit = 0 and returns zero contacts, which makes the session look benign. Later, after the same session reaches Established, the periodic update path computes self.peer_list_limit.unwrap() as usize - 1. With limit = 0, that wraps to usize::MAX and then in rand 0.9.2, choose_multiple() immediately attempts Vec::with_capacity(amount), which deterministically panics with capacity overflow. This issue has been patched in version 1.3.0.

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
nimiq core-rs-albatross < 1.3.0

Weakness: CWE-191 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References