Vulnerabilities / GHSA-4wf3-5qj9-368v

critical

GHSA-4wf3-5qj9-368v

IBC-Go: Non-deterministic JSON Unmarshalling of IBC Acknowledgement can result in a chain halt

Published Modified
In the Trivy database since at least 24 Oct 2026, 07:11 UTCWhen it arrived before that build is not recorded.

Severity by source

No source gives a CVSS score.

Trivy's own label is CRITICAL. Rated critical by GHSA.

Description

Name: ISA-2025-001: Non-deterministic JSON Unmarshalling of IBC Acknowledgement can result in a chain halt Component: IBC-Go Criticality: High (Considerable Impact; Likely Likelihood per [ACMv1.2](https://github.com/interchainio/security/blob/main/resources/CLASSIFICATION_MATRIX.md)) Affected versions: IBC-Go >= v7; Earlier IBC-Go versions MAY also be affected. Affected users: Validators, Full nodes, IBC Middleware authors ### Description An issue was discovered in IBC-Go's deserialization of acknowledgements that results in non-deterministic behavior which can halt a chain. Any user that can open an IBC channel can introduce this state to the chain. The following patch is in addition to the previous patch which now extends the same protection to all applications beyond transfer. ### Patches The new IBC-Go releases below address this issue: * [v7.10.0](https://github.com/cosmos/ibc-go/releases/tag/v7.10.0) * [v8.7.0](https://github.com/cosmos/ibc-go/releases/tag/v8.7.0) ### Workarounds To prevent this state from being introduced to a chain, it is possible to permission Channel Opening as a workaround. ### Notes on Re-Release This is an extension of the previous patch, please update to the latest patch to get full coverage against the reported issue. #### Is this state breaking? This patch is not state breaking unless an exploit is submitted before the patch is applied across the network in which case the chain will halt just as if it was unpatched. Thus, you can safely apply this patch in a rolling manner and encourage validators to patch as soon as possible in order to prevent any chain halts (and we've already cut new versions of these for you). #### Testing we have done to gain more confidence in this release * In addition to testing ibc-go, we also did the following: * Tested PFM v7 and v8 after bumping dependencies * Tested ibc-hooks v7 and v8 after bumping dependencies * Ran a patched node on Cosmos Hub Mainnet and triggered failing and successful transactions that used PFM * Ran a patched node on Osmosis mainnet and triggered failing and successful transactions that used ibc-hooks This is a more thorough process than before, so we have higher confidence. This issue was reported to the Cosmos Bug Bounty Program by swelf19 on HackerOne on February 18, 2025. If you believe you have found a bug in the Interchain Stack or would like to contribute to the program by reporting a bug, please see https://hackerone.com/cosmos. If you have questions about Interchain security efforts, please reach out to our official communication channel at [security@interchain.io](mailto:security@interchain.io). For more information about the Interchain Foundation’s engagement with Amulet, and to sign up for security notification emails, please see https://github.com/interchainio/security. A Github Security Advisory for this issue is available in the IBC-Go [repository](https://github.com/cosmos/ibc-go/security/advisories/GHSA-4wf3-5qj9-368v).

Affected packages and fixed versions

SourcePackageFixed in
go::GitHub Security Advisory Gogithub.com/cosmos/ibc-go, github.com/cosmos/ibc-go/v2, github.com/cosmos/ibc-go/v3 and 5 more7.10.0 and 1 more
Show all 8 entries from 1 source
SourcePackageFixed in
go::GitHub Security Advisory Gogithub.com/cosmos/ibc-go7.10.0
go::GitHub Security Advisory Gogithub.com/cosmos/ibc-go/v27.10.0
go::GitHub Security Advisory Gogithub.com/cosmos/ibc-go/v37.10.0
go::GitHub Security Advisory Gogithub.com/cosmos/ibc-go/v47.10.0
go::GitHub Security Advisory Gogithub.com/cosmos/ibc-go/v57.10.0
go::GitHub Security Advisory Gogithub.com/cosmos/ibc-go/v67.10.0
go::GitHub Security Advisory Gogithub.com/cosmos/ibc-go/v77.10.0
go::GitHub Security Advisory Gogithub.com/cosmos/ibc-go/v88.7.0

References

Vulnerability data compiled from the Trivy vulnerability database (trivy-db, Aqua Security, Apache License 2.0), which aggregates third-party advisories. CVE records are published by The MITRE Corporation under the CVE Terms of Use; CVE is a trademark of MITRE. This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Severity, titles and advisory data from the GitHub Advisory Database (CC BY 4.0), Red Hat security data (CC BY 4.0) and the other sources linked on each entry. Entries may be summarised or re-formatted; the linked original is the authoritative record.