OpenSIPS: Denial of service in presence.handle_publish() from unchecked Content-Type state

Summary

OpenSIPS is a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) server implementation. Versions 3.4.0 through 3.6.5 contain a denial of service vulnerability in the presence module. When the presence module's handle_publish() function processes a SIP PUBLISH request with an Event: presence header and a message body while the configuration option enable_sphere_check=1 is set, it invokes the get_content_type() macro without first calling parse_content_type_hdr(), causing it to dereference uninitialized or NULL Content-Type parsing state and crash. If a Content-Type header is present but unparsed, msg->content_type->parsed is NULL and is dereferenced as a content_t pointer; if the request lacks a Content-Type header entirely, msg->content_type itself is NULL, and both cases lead to a crash. A remote attacker can therefore cause a denial of service against an affected instance with a single PUBLISH request over UDP or TCP, using either a valid Content-Type: application/pidf+xml request or one with the header removed, and the vulnerable code path itself does not enforce authentication (though a deployment's routing configuration may require it before this route is reached). The issue has been fixed in version 3.6.6 and 4.0.0-rc1.

Timeline

1. Aug 4, 2026, 9:23 PM UTCCVE published
2. Aug 5, 2026, 2:15 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial

3. Aug 5, 2026, 2:16 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• OpenSIPS opensips

  From 3.4.0 · fixed in 3.6.6; From 4.0.0-beta · fixed in 4.0.0-rc1

References 1