CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-94453

HighCVSS 7.5
Published: Translated: NVD NIST

Summary

Libreswan's pluto daemon has a use-after-free vulnerability when a client connecting using IKE over TCP closes the connection and another packet (retransmit or malicious) is received for the same tuple. IKE state is retained in memory after the client closes the connection, storing a pointer to iface_endpoint inside ike_sa.sa->st_iface_endpoint. Once this invalid pointer is used, the daemon crashes and restarts. This vulnerability can be triggered before the remote peer has authenticated itself. Continued exploitation can lead to a denial of service. Remote code execution could be possible. The IKE over TCP option is not enabled by default; only configurations that contain listen-tcp=yes are affected.

Risk Assessment

An attacker can cause the pluto daemon to crash and restart, resulting in denial of service, and in some cases potential remote code execution. The risk applies to configurations with listen-tcp=yes enabled.

Recommendation

Update Libreswan to a patched version and consider disabling listen-tcp=yes if not required.

Other vulnerabilities in Libreswan

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

Libreswan's pluto daemon has a use-after-free vulnerability when a client connecting using IKE over TCP closes the connection and another packet (retransmit or malicious) is received for the same tuple. IKE state is retained in memory after the client closes the connection, storing a pointer to iface_endpoint inside ike_sa.sa->st_iface_endpoint. Once this invalid pointer is used, the daemon crashes and restarts. This vulnerability can be triggered before the remote peer has authenticated itself. Continued exploitation can lead to a denial of service. Remote code execution could be possible. The IKE over TCP option is not enabled by default; only configurations that contain listen-tcp=yes are affected.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS