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CVE-2026-4247

TCP: remotely exploitable DoS vector (mbuf leak)

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
Fix
Fixed in p5, p1, p10
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
  • Exploitation: none
  • Automatable: yes
  • Technical impact: partial

Summary

When a challenge ACK is to be sent tcp_respond() constructs and sends the challenge ACK and consumes the mbuf that is passed in. When no challenge ACK should be sent the function returns and leaks the mbuf. If an attacker is either on path with an established TCP connection, or can themselves establish a TCP connection, to an affected FreeBSD machine, they can easily craft and send packets which meet the challenge ACK criteria and cause the FreeBSD host to leak an mbuf for each crafted packet in excess of the configured rate limit settings i.e. with default settings, crafted packets in excess of the first 5 sent within a 1s period will leak an mbuf. Technically, off-path attackers can also exploit this problem by guessing the IP addresses, TCP port numbers and in some cases the sequence numbers of established connections and spoofing packets towards a FreeBSD machine, but this is harder to do effectively.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. CISA SSVC assessment

    Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial

  3. Record last updated

Affected versions

  • FreeBSD FreeBSD

    From 15.0-RELEASE · fixed in p5; From 14.4-RELEASE · fixed in p1; From 14.3-RELEASE · fixed in p10

References 1

security.freebsd.org