OpenZeppelin Contracts vulnerable to ECDSA signature malleability
Impact
The functions ECDSA.recover and ECDSA.tryRecover are vulnerable to a kind of signature malleability due to accepting EIP-2098 compact signatures in addition to the traditional 65 byte signature format. This is only an issue for the functions that take a single bytes argument, and not the functions that take r, v, s or r, vs as separate arguments.
The potentially affected contracts are those that implement signature reuse or replay protection by marking the signature itself as used rather than the signed message or a nonce included in it. A user may take a signature that has already been submitted, submit it again in a different form, and bypass this protection.
Patches
The issue has been patched in 4.7.3.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, or need assistance deploying a fix, email us at security@openzeppelin.com.
Affected software
Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.
| Platform | Package | Vulnerable versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| npm package | @openzeppelin/contracts | >= 4.1.0, < 4.7.3 | 4.7.3 |
| npm package | @openzeppelin/contracts-upgradeable | >= 4.1.0, < 4.7.3 | 4.7.3 |
References
- https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts/security/advisories/GHSA-4h98-2769-gh6h
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-35961
- https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts/pull/3610
- https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts/commit/d693d89d99325f395182e4f547dbf5ff8e5c3c87
- https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts
- https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts/releases/tag/v4.7.3
- CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:L- Weakness (CWE)
CWE-354- Platform
- npm
- Package
@openzeppelin/contracts, @openzeppelin/contracts-upgradeable- Disclosed
- 18.08.2022
- Updated
- 11.10.2026 10:22
Sources and licenses
OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-4h98-2769-gh6h - CC BY 4.0
Vulnerability history: @openzeppelin/contracts-upgradeable
All published vulnerabilities of this package (npm package), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.
- Total entries
- 22
- First → latest
- 08.2021 07.2025
- Without a fix
- 0
- Exploited in attacks
- 0
Severity breakdown
- Critical 3
- High 5
- Medium 12
- Low 2
Disclosures per year
- 2021: 5
- 2022: 8
- 2023: 7
- 2024: 1
- 2025: 1
- 2026: 0
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OpenZeppelin Contracts vulnerable to ECDSA signature malleability this entry
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