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Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

CVE-2026-21909

Severity High
Score 7.1/10

Summary

A Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime vulnerability in the routing protocol daemon (rpd) Juniper Networks Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved allows an unauthenticated attacker controlling an adjacent IS-IS neighbor to send a specific update packet causing a memory leak. Continued receipt and processing of these packets will exhaust all available memory, crashing rpd and creating a Denial of Service (DoS) condition. Memory usage can be monitored through the use of the 'show task memory detail' command. For example: user@junos> show task memory detail | match ted-infra   TED-INFRA-COOKIE           25   1072     28   1184     229 user@junos> show task memory detail | match ted-infra   TED-INFRA-COOKIE           31   1360     34   1472     307 This issue affects: Junos OS:  * from 23.2 before 23.2R2,  * from 23.4 before 23.4R1-S2, 23.4R2,  * from 24.1 before 24.1R2;  Junos OS Evolved:  * from 23.2 before 23.2R2-EVO,  * from 23.4 before 23.4R1-S2-EVO, 23.4R2-EVO,  * from 24.1 before 24.1R2-EVO. This issue does not affect Junos OS versions before 23.2R1 or Junos OS Evolved versions before 23.2R1-EVO.

  • LOW
  • ADJACENT_NETWORK
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • HIGH

CWE-401 - Missing release of memory after effective lifetime (memory leak)

'Missing release of memory after effective lifetime (memory leak)' is a weakness that occurs when software doesn't effectively release allocated memory after it is used. If not addressed, this enables attackers to launch denial of service attacks (by crashing or hanging the program) or take advantage of other unexpected behavior resulting from low memory conditions.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published