If an attacker is either on path with an established TCP connection, or can themselves establish a TCP connection, to an affected FreeBSD machine, they can easily craft and send packets which meet the challenge ACK criteria and cause the FreeBSD host to leak an mbuf for each crafted packet in excess of the configured rate limit settings i.e. with default settings, crafted packets in excess of the first 5 sent within a 1s period will leak an mbuf.
Technically, off-path attackers can also exploit this problem by guessing the IP addresses, TCP port numbers and in some cases the sequence numbers of established connections and spoofing packets towards a FreeBSD machine, but this is harder to do effectively.
Metrics
Affected Vendors & Products
No advisories yet.
Solution
No solution given by the vendor.
Workaround
No workaround given by the vendor.
Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:15:00 +0000
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cvssV3_1
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Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000
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Freebsd
Freebsd freebsd |
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| Vendors & Products |
Freebsd
Freebsd freebsd |
Thu, 26 Mar 2026 06:30:00 +0000
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| Description | When a challenge ACK is to be sent tcp_respond() constructs and sends the challenge ACK and consumes the mbuf that is passed in. When no challenge ACK should be sent the function returns and leaks the mbuf. If an attacker is either on path with an established TCP connection, or can themselves establish a TCP connection, to an affected FreeBSD machine, they can easily craft and send packets which meet the challenge ACK criteria and cause the FreeBSD host to leak an mbuf for each crafted packet in excess of the configured rate limit settings i.e. with default settings, crafted packets in excess of the first 5 sent within a 1s period will leak an mbuf. Technically, off-path attackers can also exploit this problem by guessing the IP addresses, TCP port numbers and in some cases the sequence numbers of established connections and spoofing packets towards a FreeBSD machine, but this is harder to do effectively. | |
| Title | TCP: remotely exploitable DoS vector (mbuf leak) | |
| Weaknesses | CWE-401 | |
| References |
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Projects
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: freebsd
Published:
Updated: 2026-03-26T14:41:24.333Z
Reserved: 2026-03-16T03:51:53.368Z
Link: CVE-2026-4247
Updated: 2026-03-26T14:38:47.013Z
Status : Awaiting Analysis
Published: 2026-03-26T07:16:20.387
Modified: 2026-03-26T15:16:41.263
Link: CVE-2026-4247
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
Updated: 2026-03-26T12:08:23Z