CVE-2026-16165 in DataPower Gateway
Summary
by MITRE • 10/08/2026
IBM DataPower Gateway 10.5.0.0 through 10.5.0.22, 10.6.1 through 10.6.6, 10.6.0.0 through 10.6.0.10, and 11.0.0.0 through 11.0.0.2 could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service due to a null pointer dereference.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/08/2026
The vulnerability identified in IBM DataPower Gateway versions ranging from 10.5.0.0 up to 10.5.0.22, as well as the 10.6.x and 11.0.x series through their respective patch levels, represents a critical stability issue rooted in improper memory management within the application's core processing logic. This flaw is classified technically as a null pointer dereference, which corresponds to CWE-476 in the Common Weakness Enumeration standard. In software engineering terms, this error occurs when an application attempts to access or manipulate a memory address that has not been assigned any value, effectively pointing to nothing rather than a valid data structure. For IBM DataPower Gateway, a high-performance integration appliance designed for API management, web services security, and protocol transformation, such a defect is particularly concerning because the gateway handles thousands of concurrent connections and complex message transformations under heavy load conditions where memory allocation failures or unexpected input states are more likely to trigger this specific code path.
From an operational perspective, the primary impact of this vulnerability is a denial of service against the IBM DataPower Gateway infrastructure. When a remote attacker sends specially crafted requests that exploit the null pointer condition, the application process handling those requests will crash immediately due to the segmentation fault or access violation generated by the operating system. Since DataPower Gateways often serve as critical choke points in enterprise architectures, managing traffic between internal services and external clients, the failure of even a single instance can lead to significant service disruption. This may result in dropped connections, failed API transactions, and an inability for downstream systems to communicate with upstream consumers until the gateway process is restarted or failover mechanisms engage if configured. The attack does not require authentication, allowing any remote actor on the network path to potentially trigger this condition, thereby turning a simple configuration error into a vector for sustained availability attacks.
The technical mechanism behind this null pointer dereference likely involves insufficient validation of input parameters during the parsing or processing phases of specific protocols supported by DataPower, such as SOAP, REST, or MQSeries messages. If an attacker can control aspects of the message structure that influence internal pointers without proper bounds checking or existence verification before use, they can force the application to reference a null address. This aligns with ATT&CK technique T1499, Endpoint Denial of Service, specifically under sub-techniques related to resource exhaustion or service disruption via software vulnerabilities. The lack of robust error handling means that instead of gracefully rejecting malformed input and returning an appropriate HTTP or protocol-level error code, the application terminates unexpectedly. This behavior highlights a gap in defensive coding practices where assumptions about data integrity are not rigorously enforced at runtime boundaries.
To mitigate this risk, organizations running affected versions must prioritize applying the latest security patches provided by IBM for their specific DataPower Gateway version line. It is essential to verify that all instances within the cluster or standalone deployment have been updated past the specified vulnerable build numbers. In environments where immediate patching is not feasible due to maintenance windows, network-level controls such as Web Application Firewalls should be configured to inspect and block suspiciously malformed requests that might trigger this condition. Additionally, implementing strict input validation rules at the API gateway level can help filter out anomalous traffic patterns before they reach the vulnerable code paths. Regular monitoring of system logs for unexpected process restarts or core dumps is also recommended to detect potential exploitation attempts early. Ensuring high availability configurations with automatic failover capabilities can further reduce the business impact by minimizing downtime during any necessary service interruptions caused by patching cycles.