CVE-2026-52737

Am I affected You are affected if: 1. You run zebrad up to and including v4.4.1. 2. Your node accepts inbound P2P connections and is syncing or catching up to the chain tip. Summary A malicious peer can answer Zebra's outbound getblocks/FindBlocks request with a small two-hash inventory, then serve a syntactically valid block whose coinbase height is far above the victim's local tip. The AboveLookaheadHeightLimit error in the sync download pipeline triggers a global sync restart rather than being scoped to the offending peer. The peer is never scored or disconnected because the error type does not carry the advertiser address. On mainnet, each successful cycle imposes a 67-second sync restart delay. All in-flight downloads from honest peers are cancelled on each restart. Details The bug is the interaction of three layers: 1. The syncer promotes unvalidated FindBlocks peer responses into concrete download schedules without checking that the advertised hashes are plausible chain extensions. 2. When a downloaded block's coinbase height exceeds tip + VERIFICATION_PIPELINE_DROP_LIMIT, the sync downloader returns BlockDownloadVerifyError::AboveLookaheadHeightLimit. This error variant carries only the block height and hash, not the advertiser peer address. 3. The sync error handler in handle_block_response only sends misbehaviour scores for BlockDownloadVerifyError::Invalid errors that carry an advertiser_addr and have a nonzero misbehavior_score(). AboveLookaheadHeightLimit falls through to the default restart-worthy path, cancelling all in-flight downloads and waiting 67 seconds before restarting sync. The attacker needs only an unauthenticated P2P connection (post-handshake), a tiny payload (one two-hash inv message plus one small block per cycle), and no mining capability, funds, or valid chain data. The peer is never penalised, so the attack is repeatable indefinitely. Additionally, several other pre-consensus sync-l

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