CVE-2022-39389: Witness Block Parsing DoS Vulnerability in lnd

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2022-11-17 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-20

Description

Lightning Network Daemon (lnd) is an implementation of a lightning bitcoin overlay network node. All lnd nodes before version `v0.15.4` are vulnerable to a block parsing bug that can cause a node to enter a degraded state once encountered. In this degraded state, nodes can continue to make payments and forward HTLCs, and close out channels. Opening channels is prohibited, and also on chain transaction events will be undetected. This can cause loss of funds if a CSV expiry is researched during a breach attempt or a CLTV delta expires forgetting the funds in the HTLC. A patch is available in `lnd` version 0.15.4. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade may use the `lncli updatechanpolicy` RPC call to increase their CLTV value to a very high amount or increase their fee policies. This will prevent nodes from routing through your node, meaning that no pending HTLCs can be present.

Affected products

btcsuite btcd: before 0.23.3 — fixed in 0.23.3
Lightning Network Daemon Project Lightning Network Daemon: before 0.15.4 — fixed in 0.15.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: btcsuite btcd 0.23.3; Lightning Network Daemon Project Lightning Network Daemon 0.15.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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