Medium severity · published Aug 18, 2026
CVE-2026-52739
ZEBRA: Repeated Non-Finalized Shielded Transaction Aborts Zebra Before Duplicate-Nullifier Rejection
5.9
CVSS
0.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
ZEBRA is a Zcash node written entirely in Rust. Prior to 4.5.0, a malicious block producer can terminate zebrad by placing the same shielded transaction in a non-finalized parent block and its child. In zebra-state/src/service/non_finalized_state/chain.rs, Chain::push originally inserted the transaction hash into tx_loc_by_hash and asserted uniqueness before updating shielded data and running the duplicate Sprout, Sapling, or Orchard nullifier checks. The repeated transaction therefore reached the transactions must be unique within a single chain assertion before contextual validation could reject it cleanly. Zebra release builds use panic equals abort, so the reachable assertion terminates the entire process; exploitation requires either two consecutive attacker-mined blocks or an attacker-mined child immediately after an honest block includes the attacker's shielded transaction. This issue is fixed in version 4.5.0.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.5% · higher than 44% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
ZE
zebra · ZcashFoundation
< 4.5.0 · source: vendor
ZE
zebra-state · ZcashFoundation
< 7.0.0 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-52739
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-52739
github.com
https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/commit/1440b43ca7df59aca948090d45117557b217a6cd
github.com
https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/releases/tag/v4.5.0
github.com
https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/security/advisories/GHSA-hhm7-qrv5-h4r6
More from zebra
9.3
CVE-2026-52735
ZEBRA: Consensus divergence via P2SH sigop undercount in pure-Rust disabled-opcode parser
9.3
CVE-2026-54496
Missing copy constraint in halo2_gadgets variable-base scalar multiplication allows under-constrained base, breaking Orchard Action circuit soundness
9.1
CVE-2026-44497
ZEBRA: Consensus Divergence in Transparent Sighash Hash-Type Handling due to Stale Buffer
9.1
CVE-2026-41583
ZEBRA: Consensus Divergence in Transparent Sighash Hash-Type Handling
8.7
CVE-2026-52736
ZEBRA: Block suppression via NU5 same-header body poisoning of sent-hash cache
