CPU exhaustion via unbounded LISP address parsing
Published Apr 12, 2023 · Updated Nov 3, 2025
Denial of service in Wireshark 3.6.0 through 3.6.12 and 4.0.0 through 4.0.4 allows attackers to cause excessive CPU use. The LISP dissector passes an unbounded original packet buffer through recursive address parsing while advancing by declared lengths, causing malformed fields to generate excessive protocol-tree work in a large loop. Triggering requires injected malformed LISP traffic during live capture or user interaction with a crafted capture file; the reported impact is CPU exhaustion rather than data access or modification.
Summary
What happened
Denial of service in Wireshark 3.6.0 through 3.6.12 and 4.0.0 through 4.0.4 allows attackers to cause excessive CPU use. The LISP dissector passes an unbounded original packet buffer through recursive address parsing while advancing by declared lengths, causing malformed fields to generate excessive protocol-tree work in a large loop. Triggering requires injected malformed LISP traffic during live capture or user interaction with a crafted capture file; the reported impact is CPU exhaustion rather than data access or modification.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-1993
- Published
- Apr 12, 2023
- Updated
- Nov 3, 2025
- Vendor
- Wireshark Foundation
- Product
- Wireshark
- Classifications
- CWE-834, T1499
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Apr 12, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Nov 3, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=>=3.6.0, <3.6.13
- Affected versionversion=>=4.0.0, <4.0.5
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Public exploit references
- lisp_too_many_tree_items.pcapng.gzproof of concept · demonstrated
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
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