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OpenZeppelin Contracts's governor proposal creation may be blocked by frontrunning

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jun 7, 2023 in OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts • Updated Nov 27, 2023

Package

npm @openzeppelin/contracts (npm)

Affected versions

>= 4.3.0, < 4.9.1

Patched versions

4.9.1
npm @openzeppelin/contracts-upgradeable (npm)
>= 4.3.0, < 4.9.1
4.9.1

Description

Impact

By frontrunning the creation of a proposal, an attacker can become the proposer and gain the ability to cancel it. The attacker can do this repeatedly to try to prevent a proposal from being proposed at all.

This impacts the Governor contract in v4.9.0 only, and the GovernorCompatibilityBravo contract since v4.3.0.

Patches

The problem has been patched in 4.9.1 by introducing opt-in frontrunning protection.

Workarounds

Submit the proposal creation transaction to an endpoint with frontrunning protection.

Credit

Reported by Lior Abadi and Joaquin Pereyra from Coinspect.

References

https://www.coinspect.com/openzeppelin-governor-dos/

References

@frangio frangio published to OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts Jun 7, 2023
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Jun 7, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jun 8, 2023
Reviewed Jun 8, 2023
Last updated Nov 27, 2023

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

EPSS score

0.094%
(41st percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-34234

GHSA ID

GHSA-5h3x-9wvq-w4m2

Source code

Credits

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