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This content is sourced from the official Cosmos Security repository.Last sync: Oct 1, 2026 | View source

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Introduction

Cosmos Labs is committed to maintaining the security of the Cosmos Stack and supporting responsible vulnerability disclosure. We operate a bug bounty program to incentivize security researchers to identify and report security issues. This document defines the process for reporting vulnerabilities, describes the bug bounty program, and outlines Cosmos Labs’ approach to patching and public disclosure. Security patches are made privately at every severity and published on a monthly cycle. See Security Patch Process.

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Reporting a Vulnerability

Private Disclosure Required Security vulnerabilities affecting the Cosmos ecosystem—including the Cosmos SDK, CometBFT, IBC, and other core components—must be reported privately through the channels listed below.
Reports submitted via email are not eligible for bounty rewards. Only reports submitted through the Bug Bounty qualify for bounties.
Public disclosure of vulnerabilities (including GitHub issues, blog posts, or social media) is prohibited until Cosmos Labs has remediated the issue and explicitly authorized disclosure. Disclosure timelines may be coordinated with the reporter. Submission of a report constitutes agreement to participate in coordinated vulnerability disclosure, allowing time for development, testing, and deployment of a fix prior to public release of details.

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Bug Bounty Program Overview

Cosmos Labs operates a bug bounty program through Immunefi. Eligible reports are rewarded based on severity, impact, and quality. In Scope: Core Cosmos Stack components, including the Cosmos SDK, CometBFT, IBC, Cosmos EVM, and other critical infrastructure components. The authoritative scope definition, severity classifications, and reward ranges are maintained on the Cosmos Immunefi program page. The program is governed by Safe Harbor provisions for good-faith research. The Immunefi page defines the applicable Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Policy and Safe Harbor terms.
In the event of conflict, the Immunefi policy supersedes all other documentation.

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Vulnerability Severity Levels

Reported vulnerabilities are assigned a severity classification that determines handling priority and reward. It does not determine how or when a fix is published: every severity follows the same patch process below. The definitions that define severity classification and the reward ranges that follow are maintained on our Immunefi page and not duplicated here. See the Cosmos Immunefi program page Impacts in Scope section for further details, as well as our classification framework for details on our classification methodology.

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Security Patch Process

All security patches are made privately, at every severity. There is no separate public path for lower severity issues, and no severity-based decision about where a fix lands. The process does not depend on how we learned of the vulnerability. A report through the bug bounty, a finding from an internal audit, and a direct disclosure all follow the same path.

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Monthly private repositories

Cosmos Labs maintains a set of private repositories each month, one for each repository in bug bounty scope. That includes the Cosmos SDK, CometBFT, IBC-Go, Cosmos EVM and the CosmWasm repositories, and is not limited to them. They are named for the repository and the month, for example cosmos-sdk-priv-july-2026. Access is granted to downstream teams that have passed KYC and run the repository in production. Each month’s repositories are created fresh and collaborators are reinvited, which keeps the access list current. They are rebased periodically against main and the maintained release branches, so they stay current with their public counterparts.

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Patch detail

Patches merged into a private repository are not obfuscated. A patch PR carries the description of the vulnerability, its root cause, severity, potential impact, and any tests that reproduce it. Downstream teams therefore hold the same information we do, and decide for themselves how their chain responds. Cosmos Labs does not make that call on their behalf.

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Private distribution

A team with access may use the patch however it needs to in order to build, vendoring included. The restriction is on passing the source on: until the patch is public, do not publish it in a public repository, do not commit it to one inside a vendored dependency tree, and do not make it available to validators or node operators. A team that passes patch source to anyone outside the teams that already have access, before the patch is public, loses access to the private repositories, including the invitations to any future ones. This is a serious violation of secure disclosure and puts all other chains at risk. That is not a penalty under Consequences of Improper Disclosure. Access to the private repositories is granted on the condition that the source stays private, so breaking that condition ends the grant. Those consequences may apply as well, and we may take further action where the disclosure put chains at risk. Distributing a built binary that contains the patch is allowed, through whatever mechanism the chain already uses, including GitHub release artifacts, provided no patch source is included. After each PR merges into a maintained release line, we tag a -hotfix version on that line, so teams that want to remediate ahead of the public release can build against the fix. Where a fix spans repositories that depend on each other, downstream teams point at the private repositories with replace directives in go.mod. Move those back to the public tags at the monthly release. The private repository comes down two weeks after that, and references to it stop resolving.

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Notification

Critical patches are announced by email to the security mailing list for the affected repository. Patches at all other severities are not announced individually. Teams track the -hotfix tags on the private repository and use the patch details to determine whether to adopt a fix ahead of the public release.

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Code freeze and public release

The private repositories are frozen for the last week of each month. During the freeze no further patches are merged into that month’s repositories. They are merged into the next month’s instead, which is why each month’s set is created seven days early. At the start of the following month, every patch in the frozen repositories is merged into the corresponding public repository, new patch releases are tagged, and a GHSA is published for each vulnerability with full details. That publication is the disclosure date. The frozen repositories stay up for two weeks after that release so teams can move their builds across, and are deleted at the end of that window. Everything in them is public by then, so the window holds nothing back. Access to the next month’s repositories is granted by fresh invitation on its own schedule, so the retention does not extend anyone’s access. A vulnerability reported on August 12 and patched on August 15 therefore reaches the private repositories the same week, is frozen on August 25, is public on September 1, and the August repositories come down on September 15.

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Critical vulnerabilities

Criticals follow the same process, with two additions. We notify affected chains through the security mailing list for that repository that the month’s private repository contains a critical patch. And a critical is not merged into a month’s repository within three days of its freeze; one that would be goes into the next month’s repository instead, which pushes its public release out by a month. Together with the week-long freeze, that leaves at least ten days between a critical landing in a private repository and its public release.

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Active exploitation

A vulnerability that is being actively exploited, or where we confirm attacker awareness ahead of the scheduled release, leaves the monthly cycle and is handled immediately and separately as an incident. That means emergency mitigations, private fix distribution, or a coordinated upgrade, ahead of any public disclosure. This applies regardless of the original severity classification.

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Advisories

A GitHub Security Advisory is published for every patched vulnerability at the monthly public release, containing:
  • Vulnerability description
  • Affected versions
  • Severity classification
  • Remediation guidance
  • Reporter attribution (unless anonymity is requested)
All advisories remain publicly available.
Cosmos Labs acknowledges and appreciates the contributions of security researchers, auditors, and white-hat hackers who strengthen the Cosmos ecosystem.

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Consequences of Improper Disclosure

Publishing vulnerability details before their disclosure date puts users at risk whatever the intent. A fix reaches downstream chains privately before it is public, so early disclosure exposes chains that have not yet upgraded. We give the reporter a disclosure date. That date is the one that counts, and where we have not given one, it is the monthly public release that carries the fix. Disclosure we have authorized is never a violation, whenever it happens. The consequences below apply to anyone who publishes early, whether or not they submitted through the bug bounty program. Reporters who submit through Immunefi are also bound by the Immunefi publication policy, which governs the program and supersedes this section where the two conflict. 1. Warning. A first instance of publishing ahead of the disclosure date results in a written warning from the security response team, recorded for the purpose of judging later instances. Where the reporter was eligible for a bounty, the report also becomes ineligible. 2. Suspension. A repeat instance, or publishing something an attacker can act on immediately, makes the report ineligible and removes the reporter from any private notification or pre-disclosure list for 3 months. We continue to accept and act on their vulnerability reports during that period, but those reports are not eligible for a bounty. 3. Permanent block. A pattern of improper disclosure, or publishing with intent to cause harm, results in a permanent block from the Cosmos organization and from any pre-disclosure list. The report is ineligible for a bounty. We still receive security reports from them, because closing that channel would put users at risk, but they take no further part in the project. Severity determines the level rather than the number of prior instances, so a sufficiently serious first instance may result in a permanent block without prior steps. The security response team decides these actions. To appeal one, write to conduct@cosmos.network, which is independent of the team that imposed it.

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Repository Scope

Supported components are the ones listed in the current release family. Repositories outside that list, including archived repositories, are not in scope.