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RUSTSEC-2026-0227

NIP-44 v2 decryption permits resource exhaustion

High crates.io
Severity
7.5 / 10
High · CVSS 3.1
Exploit chance (EPSS)
—
No score published
Known exploited
No
Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness
—
Not classified
Fix
0.44.7
Upgrade nostr to this version or later

Description

The NIP-44 decryption entry point Base64-decoded the complete attacker-controlled payload before determining its version or enforcing any size limit. For v2 payloads, the decoded buffer was then authenticated with HMAC even when it was much larger than the maximum payload supported by the crate's current v2 codec.

A malicious relay or event author could deliver an oversized value to an application that decrypts NIP-44 content. The value caused memory allocation and Base64 and HMAC work proportional to its size before authentication failed; knowledge of the conversation key was not required to consume those initial resources. Repeated payloads could exhaust memory or CPU and make the receiving application unavailable. The issue does not disclose plaintext or key material and does not bypass message authentication.

Decryption now reads only the encoded version prefix first, derives the bound from the largest payload the current v2 encoder can emit, and rejects oversized encoded and decoded payloads before full allocation or HMAC processing. The limit remains in the v2 implementation so a future codec with a different length format can define its own bound.

Affected versions

crates.io

PackageVulnerableFixed in
nostr
>= 0.0.0-0, < 0.44.7
0.44.7

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

nostr crates.io → 0.44.7

cargo
cargo update -p nostr --precise 0.44.7

Severity breakdown

CVSS 3.1 7.5

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

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

References

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last updated by the source
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