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OpenAdvisories
High · 7.5 CVE-2026-86040 EUVD-2026-81688

libp2p: Unbounded RPC decode + synchronous subscription processing in @libp2p/floodsub allows unauthenticated DoS

Published Sep 17, 2026 · Updated Sep 17, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

libp2p is a JavaScript implementation of the libp2p networking stack. Prior to 11.0.26, @libp2p/floodsub accepts unauthenticated RPC frames on /floodsub/1.0.0 through PeerStreams.attachInboundStream in packages/floodsub/src/peer-streams.ts without protobuf element limits, then processRpc and processRpcSubOpt in packages/floodsub/src/floodsub.ts synchronously process the subscriptions array without a per-frame cap. A single bounded-size frame can decode into millions of empty subscription entries that block the event loop, while hundreds of thousands of unique-topic SUBSCRIBE entries allocate PeerSet objects in this.topics that are not removed after peer removal or stop. Empty entries cause CPU exhaustion but do not grow this.topics; persistent memory growth requires unique topics. The subscription path bypasses message signature validation and the message-only processing queue, allowing a remote peer to cause sustained CPU denial of service, memory exhaustion, out-of-memory termination, and node unavailability. The issue is fixed in version 11.0.26.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
libp2p js-libp2p < 11.0.26 —
@libp2p floodsub < 11.0.26 —

References