CVE-2025-26466
MEDIUM severity · CVSS 5.9 · Resource exhaustion
5.9CVSS MEDIUM
Summary
A flaw was found in the OpenSSH package. For each ping packet the SSH server receives, a pong packet is allocated in a memory buffer and stored in a queue of packages. It is only freed when the server/client key exchange has finished. A malicious client may keep sending such packages, leading to an uncontrolled increase in memory consumption on the server side. Consequently, the server may become unavailable, resulting in a denial of service attack.
Impact & exploitability
Attack vectorNetwork
Attack complexityHigh
Privileges requiredNone
User interactionNone
Confidentiality impactNone
Integrity impactNone
Availability impactHigh
Exploit probability (EPSS)38%
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Affected products we track (1)
Recommendation
Apply the vendor fix in your normal patch cycle. Open any affected product above for its exact safe version.
Additional information
- NVD record
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-26466Advisory
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2345043
- https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2025/q1/144
- https://www.qualys.com/2025/02/18/openssh-mitm-dos.txtAdvisory
- http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2025/Feb/18
- http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2025/May/7
- http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2025/May/8
- https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1237041Advisory