Remote Denial of Service via malformed NIP-04 IV

Overview

The nostr crate did not validate the length of the initialization vector decoded from the ?iv= portion of a NIP-04 encrypted message.

The decoded IV was converted from a byte slice to the 16-byte AES-CBC IV type using a conversion that asserts the slice length. As a result, an IV whose decoded length was not exactly 16 bytes caused a panic before ciphertext decryption. For example, ?iv=AAAA decodes to a three-byte IV and triggers the panic.

Applications that decrypt untrusted NIP-04 content are affected. The issue is also reachable through NIP-47 (Nostr Wallet Connect), where response and notification events from a malicious or compromised wallet service are passed to NIP-04 decryption. If the panic is not isolated, a crafted event can terminate the application or disrupt message processing, causing a denial of service.

The issue does not affect confidentiality or integrity.

The flaw was corrected by converting the decoded IV to [u8; 16] using a checked conversion. Invalid IV lengths now return a Malformed error instead of panicking.

Credit

Discovered and responsibly disclosed by Muhammed Shekho (mhd-shekho.com).

Affected packages

• nostr >= 0.45.0-alpha.1, < 0.45.0-alpha.6

Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

• nostr 0.45.0-alpha.6