CVE-2018-13549
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedThe mintToken function of a smart contract implementation for NeuroToken, an Ethereum token, has an integer overflow that allows the owner of the contract to set the balance of an arbitrary user to any value.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceInteger overflow vulnerability in the mintToken function of the NeuroToken Ethereum smart contract enables the contract owner to arbitrarily set any user's token balance to any value, representing a critical privilege escalation and data integrity failure.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE dataall versionsCVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Locate deployed NeuroToken contractSearch blockchain explorers (Etherscan) or your internal deployment records for the NeuroToken contract addressAffected if NeuroToken contract is deployed in your environment
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Retrieve contract source codeVerify if the source code is verified on block explorers or retrieve from your deployment artifacts. Look for the mintToken function definitionAffected if Source code contains a mintToken function that accepts user addresses and token amounts as parameters
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Check for integer overflow protectionInspect the mintToken function body for use of SafeMath library (safeAdd, safeMul, etc.) or other overflow checks on arithmetic operationsAffected if The mintToken function lacks SafeMath or equivalent overflow protection on balance calculations
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Verify owner-only access patternExamine if mintToken uses onlyOwner modifier and directly assigns a value to balances[user] rather than incrementingAffected if mintToken has onlyOwner access and directly sets balances[user] = amount (overwriting existing balance)
You are affected if the NeuroToken contract is deployed and its mintToken function directly sets user balances without SafeMath overflow protection and with owner-only access control.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataReplace the vulnerable mintToken function with a properly implemented version using SafeMath library for overflow protection, and ideally remove owner-only arbitrary balance modification capabilities to follow the principle of least privilege.
- Consultation6.0 h
- Implementation16.0 h
- Testing12.0 h
- Review / QA8.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $11,712.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2018-13549 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2018-13549 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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