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CVE-2023-42449

23
FAUCET Score

CVE-2023-42449 is a high-severity vulnerability affecting Hydra, Cardano's two-layer scalability solution, prior to version 0.13.0. A malicious head initializer can exploit incorrect data validation to extract "PTs" (Payment Tokens), enabling them to lock other participants' committed funds indefinitely or force them to pay ransom. Additionally, the attacker can spoof committed transactions, compelling other participants to cover non-existent commitments during the "Open" state. With a CVSS score of 8.1 (High), this vulnerability has a low attack complexity and can lead to high integrity and availability impacts. There is currently no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code, or significant community discussion surrounding this CVE.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
< 0.13.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:iohk:hydra:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

8.1HIGH

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

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
NONE
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
2.8
Impact Score
5.2
CvssVersion
3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
0.91%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
56.2%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-26
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0091 is in the 51st percentile among its peer group of 17,823 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.3 Bluesky, 0.1 Mastodon, and 0.2 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.1 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Vendor Patches (1)

github_advisoryvendor investigatingvia nvd_reference
View patch

References

github.com / input-output-hk/hydra/blob/1e13b60a7b21c5ccd6c36e3cf220547f5d443cef/hydra-node/src/Hydra/Chain/Direct/Tx.hs
Product
github.com / input-output-hk/hydra/blob/1e13b60a7b21c5ccd6c36e3cf220547f5d443cef/hydra-plutus/src/Hydra/Contract/Initial.hs
Product
github.com / input-output-hk/hydra/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md
Release Notes
github.com / input-output-hk/hydra/blob/master/hydra-plutus/src/Hydra/Contract/HeadTokens.hs
Product
github.com / input-output-hk/hydra/security/advisories/GHSA-9m8q-7wxv-v65p
ExploitVendor Advisory