CVE-2021-21405 | BLS Signature "Malleability"

Exp

Lotus is an Implementation of the Filecoin protocol written in Go. BLS signature validation in lotus uses blst library method VerifyCompressed. This method accepts signatures in 2 forms: "serialized", and "compressed", meaning that BLS signatures can be provided as either of 2 unique byte arrays. Lotus block validation functions perform a uniqueness check on provided blocks. Two blocks are considered distinct if the CIDs of their blockheader do not match. The CID method for blockheader includes the BlockSig of the block. The result of these issues is that it would be possible to punish miners for valid blocks, as there are two different valid block CIDs available for each block, even though this must be unique. By switching from the go based `blst` bindings over to the bindings in `filecoin-ffi`, the code paths now ensure that all signatures are compressed by size and the way they are deserialized. This happened in https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus/pull/5393.

Published: 2021-04-15 Last update: 2026-06-16 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2021-21405 is rated Exploit Available (59.5/100): CVSS Medium severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.98%). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2021-21405

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
— nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2021-21405

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.17% 0.98% +0.80%
2 2025-11-21 0.13% 0.17% +0.04%
3 2025-11-18 — 0.13% —

Full EPSS history (12 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2021-21405

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.9 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:H)
Even with access, the exploit needs extra luck, timing, or a fussy environment to actually work.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 2.2 3.6 [email protected]
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 3.9 3.6 [email protected]
5.0 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N Click to expand
Access vector (AV:N)
Can be exploited remotely over network reachability.
Access complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and predictable.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:N)
No confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:P)
Partial integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:N)
No availability impact.
 10.0 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2021-21405

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2021-21405

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2021-21405

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
filecoin lotus < 1.5.0 cpe:2.3:a:filecoin:lotus:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2021-21405

cvelogic Threat Intelligence