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Fencer Intel
medium 4.8

CVE-2025-48886 json

hydra-node dangerously assumes L1 event finality and does not consider failed transactions

published last yr. modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2025-18921

cvss
4.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 23%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Hydra is a layer-two scalability solution for Cardano. Prior to version 0.22.0, the process assumes L1 event finality and does not consider failed transactions. Currently, Cardano L1 is monitored for certain events which are necessary for state progression. At the moment, Hydra considers those events as finalized as soon as they are recognized by the node participants making such transactions the target of re-org attacks. The system does not currently consider the fact that failed transactions on the Cardano L1 can indeed appear in blocks because these transactions are so infrequent. This issue has been patched in version 0.22.0.

Patch / fix

Is CVE-2025-48886 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
last yr.

Exploit prediction

0.31% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 23% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 4.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

Affected products

  • cardano-scaling hydra

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-755 Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.