CVE-2026-52731

ZEBRA is a Zcash node written entirely in Rust. Prior to 4.5.0, an attacker authenticated to an enabled Zebra RPC endpoint can terminate zebrad by supplying a getblocktemplate LongPollId containing multi-byte UTF-8 characters. In zebra-rpc/src/methods/types/long_poll.rs, LongPollId::from_str originally checked the input byte length and then sliced fixed byte ranges to parse encoded fields. A slice boundary can land inside a multi-byte character and trigger Rust's byte index is not a char boundary panic. Zebra release builds use panic equals abort, so one malformed authenticated RPC request terminates the entire node process and can be repeated after restart. This issue is fixed in version 4.5.0.

ZEBRA is a Zcash node written entirely in Rust. Prior to 4.5.0, an attacker authenticated to an enabled Zebra RPC endpoint can terminate zebrad by supplying a getblocktemplate LongPollId containing multi-byte UTF-8 characters. In zebra-rpc/src/methods/types/long_poll.rs, LongPollId::from_str originally checked the input byte length and then sliced fixed byte ranges to parse encoded fields. A slice boundary can land inside a multi-byte character and trigger Rust's byte index is not a char boundary panic. Zebra release builds use panic equals abort, so one malformed authenticated RPC request terminates the entire node process and can be repeated after restart. This issue is fixed in version 4.5.0.

Am I affected

You are affected if:

1. You run zebrad up to and including v4.4.1.
2. Your zebrad.toml sets rpc.listen_addr to a TCP address (RPC server is enabled).
3. An attacker can authenticate to the RPC endpoint. With the default enable_cookie_auth = true, this requires the attacker to read the .cookie file. With enable_cookie_auth = false, any network client reaching the RPC port can trigger it.

Summary

The getblocktemplate RPC handler panics when parsing a LongPollId parameter that contains non-ASCII (multi-byte UTF-8) characters. The handler performs byte-index string slicing on the user-supplied string, which panics in Rust when a byte index falls within a multi-byte character boundary. Because Zebra's release profile sets panic = "abort", the panic terminates the entire node process.

Details

The getblocktemplate handler receives a user-supplied LongPollId string and slices it at fixed byte offsets to extract the encoded tip hash and tip height. When the string contains multi-byte UTF-8 characters, a byte-index slice can land in the middle of a character, causing Rust's str indexing to panic with "byte index is not a char boundary."

Under the panic = "abort" release profile, this panic terminates the entire zebrad process rather than just the RPC task.

Patches

zebra-rpc 8.0.0 and zebrad 4.5.0.

Replace byte-index string slicing with character-aware parsing or validate that the LongPollId string contains only ASCII characters before slicing.

Workarounds

• Disable the RPC server by removing rpc.listen_addr from zebrad.toml.
• Ensure enable_cookie_auth = true (the default) and restrict filesystem access to the .cookie file.
• Place a reverse proxy in front of the RPC port that validates LongPollId parameters are ASCII-only before forwarding.

Impact

A single authenticated RPC request terminates the zebrad process. Same impact profile as GHSA-c8w6-x74f-vmg3: repeatable on restart, affects mining pools and infrastructure that forward getblocktemplate calls.

Credit

Reported by @sangsoo-osec via a private GitHub Security Advisory submission.

ZEBRA is a Zcash node written entirely in Rust. Prior to 4.5.0, an attacker authenticated to an enabled Zebra RPC endpoint can terminate zebrad by supplying a getblocktemplate LongPollId containing multi-byte UTF-8 characters. In zebra-rpc/src/methods/types/long_poll.rs, LongPollId::from_str originally checked the input byte length and then sliced fixed byte ranges to parse encoded fields. A slice boundary can land inside a multi-byte character and trigger Rust's byte index is not a char boundary panic. Zebra release builds use panic equals abort, so one malformed authenticated RPC request terminates the entire node process and can be repeated after restart. This issue is fixed in version 4.5.0.

ZEBRA is a Zcash node written entirely in Rust. Prior to 4.5.0, an attacker authenticated to an enabled Zebra RPC endpoint can terminate zebrad by supplying a getblocktemplate LongPollId containing multi-byte UTF-8 characters. In zebra-rpc/src/methods/types/long_poll.rs, LongPollId::from_str originally checked the input byte length and then sliced fixed byte ranges to parse encoded fields. A slice boundary can land inside a multi-byte character and trigger Rust's byte index is not a char boundary panic. Zebra release builds use panic equals abort, so one malformed authenticated RPC request terminates the entire node process and can be repeated after restart. This issue is fixed in version 4.5.0.

Am I affected

You are affected if:

1. You run zebrad up to and including v4.4.1.
2. Your zebrad.toml sets rpc.listen_addr to a TCP address (RPC server is enabled).
3. An attacker can authenticate to the RPC endpoint. With the default enable_cookie_auth = true, this requires the attacker to read the .cookie file. With enable_cookie_auth = false, any network client reaching the RPC port can trigger it.

Summary

The getblocktemplate RPC handler panics when parsing a LongPollId parameter that contains non-ASCII (multi-byte UTF-8) characters. The handler performs byte-index string slicing on the user-supplied string, which panics in Rust when a byte index falls within a multi-byte character boundary. Because Zebra's release profile sets panic = "abort", the panic terminates the entire node process.

Details

The getblocktemplate handler receives a user-supplied LongPollId string and slices it at fixed byte offsets to extract the encoded tip hash and tip height. When the string contains multi-byte UTF-8 characters, a byte-index slice can land in the middle of a character, causing Rust's str indexing to panic with "byte index is not a char boundary."

Under the panic = "abort" release profile, this panic terminates the entire zebrad process rather than just the RPC task.

Patches

zebra-rpc 8.0.0 and zebrad 4.5.0.

Replace byte-index string slicing with character-aware parsing or validate that the LongPollId string contains only ASCII characters before slicing.

Workarounds

• Disable the RPC server by removing rpc.listen_addr from zebrad.toml.
• Ensure enable_cookie_auth = true (the default) and restrict filesystem access to the .cookie file.
• Place a reverse proxy in front of the RPC port that validates LongPollId parameters are ASCII-only before forwarding.

Impact

A single authenticated RPC request terminates the zebrad process. Same impact profile as GHSA-c8w6-x74f-vmg3: repeatable on restart, affects mining pools and infrastructure that forward getblocktemplate calls.

Credit

Reported by @sangsoo-osec via a private GitHub Security Advisory submission.