CVE-2026-52739

ZEBRA: Repeated Non-Finalized Shielded Transaction Aborts Zebra Before Duplicate-Nullifier Rejection

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.