go-f3 Vulnerable to Cached Justification Verification Bypass in github.com/filecoin-project/go-f3
go-f3 Vulnerable to Cached Justification Verification Bypass in github.com/filecoin-project/go-f3
02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE
Affected packages
26 explicit affected versions
03 / CONNECTIONS
Connected vulnerabilities
04 / EVIDENCE
Source records
go-f3 Vulnerable to Cached Justification Verification Bypass in github.com/filecoin-project/go-f3
### Description A vulnerability exists in go-f3's justification verification caching mechanism where verification results are cached without properly considering the context of the message. An attacker can bypass justification verification by: 1. First submitting a valid message with a correct justification 2. Then reusing the same cached justification in contexts where it would normally be invalid This occurs because the cached verification does not properly validate the relationship between the justification and the specific message context it's being used with. ### Impact - Potential consensus integrity issues through invalid justification acceptance - Could affect network liveness if exploited systematically - May allow malicious actors to influence consensus decisions with invalid justifications - Requires significant power (350+ TiB due to power table rounding) to meaningfully exploit - It would also be difficult to exploit in a synchronised fashion, such that >1/3 of the network goes down at one time. This isn't a one-msg panic, where you can spam it and bring everyone down, because every node will have a different amount of memory andmany SPs also run redundant lotus nodes. ### Patches The fix was merged and released with go-f3 0.8.9. All node software (Lotus, Forest, Venus) are using a patched version of go-f3 with their updates for the nv27 network upgrade. ### Workarounds The are no immediate workarounds available. Nodes should upgrade to the patched version, which they will have done if participating in nv27 on Filecoin mainnet. ### Credits The bug was reported by @lgprbs via our bug bounty program. Thank you for the contributions.
go-f3 is a Golang implementation of Fast Finality for Filecoin (F3). In versions 0.8.8 and below, go-f3's justification verification caching mechanism has a vulnerability where verification results are cached without properly considering the context of the message. An attacker can bypass justification verification by submitting a valid message with a correct justification and then reusing the same cached justification in contexts where it would normally be invalid. This occurs because the cached verification does not properly validate the relationship between the justification and the specific message context it's being used with. This issue is fixed in version 0.8.9.
05 / REFERENCES
Further evidence
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/go-f3/commit/76fff18cf07b21baccf537024bdb2fb41f75f6e2#diff-e1f646cea41790e1642e4e649c9e3c526344736d67222201703e1c29c23e9625
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/go-f3/security/advisories/GHSA-7pq9-rf9p-wcrf
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-59941
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/go-f3
- https://pkg.go.dev/vuln/GO-2025-3989
- https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2025/59xxx/CVE-2025-59941.json