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Improper Access ControlWeakness · CWE-284

CVE-2026-42278

HIGH · 8.8 CVSS v4.0 Published 2026-05-08
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
97/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

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 · unedited
UltraDAG is a minimal DAG-BFT blockchain in Rust. Prior to commit fb6ef59, the UltraDAG StateEngine implementation of SmartTransferTx contains a critical logic flaw in its policy enforcement pipeline. When a transaction originates from a "Pocket" (a derived sub-address documented in the protocol as a way to organize funds), the engine fails to resolve the pocket's parent account before checking the spending policy. Because pockets are "virtual" addresses that exist only as entries in the pocket_to_parent map and do not have their own SmartAccountConfig entries, the check_spending_policy method defaults to an "authorized/no policy" result. This allow any user (or attacker in possession of a parent key) to instantly drain every pocket on an account, even if the parent account has a strict 24-hour vault delay or a 1 UDAG daily limit. This issue has been patched via commit fb6ef59.

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
How this class of weakness works · CWE-284

The application fails to correctly restrict what a user can do or reach, so functions or resources are available to people who should not have them. Attackers simply probe for the paths where the check is missing or wrong. The fix is to enforce access-control decisions consistently on every request, evaluated against the acting user rather than assumed from context.

General guidance for the improper access control class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

CVSS 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
Authentication
X
User interaction
None
Scope
X

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

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.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix Moderate confidence
  1. 1. Navigate to the UltraDAG core repository directory
  2. 2. Fetch the latest changes from the remote repository using `git fetch origin`
  3. 3. Check out or cherry-pick the patched commit: `git checkout fb6ef59d6c1385400e7acea7ae31fc6a473c3051` or ensure your branch includes this commit
  4. 4. Verify the fix by reviewing the changes in the StateEngine implementation, specifically the SmartTransferTx policy enforcement logic to confirm the parent account resolution is now performed before checking spending policies
  5. 5. Rebuild and redeploy the UltraDAG node software
  6. 6. Test the fix by attempting a SmartTransferTx from a Pocket to confirm that spending policies (24-hour vault delay, daily limits) are now properly enforced

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-42278 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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