CVE-2026-54332 in gopacket
Summary
by MITRE • 07/28/2026
gopacket provides packet processing capabilities for Go. In version 1.6.0 and earlier, the sFlow ExtendedGatewayFlow decoder in layers/sflow.go reads an attacker-controlled 32-bit community count and AS path member count and sizes a slice allocation from those counts without bounding them against the bytes remaining in the datagram, so a 104-byte UDP datagram can drive an allocation of up to 16 GiB and cause an unauthenticated remote denial of service. This issue is fixed in version 1.6.1.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/28/2026
The gopacket library serves as a fundamental packet processing framework for Go applications, widely utilized in network monitoring, security analysis, and traffic inspection tools. The sFlow ExtendedGatewayFlow decoder within the layers/sflow.go component handles specific sFlow protocol data structures that are commonly used in network infrastructure monitoring. This vulnerability affects versions 1.6.0 and earlier of the library where the decoder fails to properly validate input parameters before performing memory allocation operations.
The technical flaw manifests in the improper handling of attacker-controlled 32-bit values representing community counts and AS path member counts within sFlow data structures. When processing these values, the decoder directly uses them to size slice allocations without first verifying that the specified sizes remain within reasonable bounds relative to the available datagram bytes. This creates a classic buffer overflow condition where an unauthenticated remote attacker can craft malicious sFlow packets that trigger excessive memory allocation behavior.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe as it enables a remote denial of service attack through minimal network traffic. An attacker requires only a 104-byte UDP datagram to potentially cause the target system to allocate up to 16 gigabytes of memory, effectively exhausting system resources and causing application crashes or system instability. This represents a significant risk for network monitoring systems that rely on gopacket for sFlow data processing, as these systems could be easily disrupted by malicious actors with minimal network access.
This vulnerability aligns with CWE-129 Input Validation and CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling, demonstrating poor resource management practices in protocol decoding. From an ATT&CK perspective, this maps to T1499 System Network Configuration Discovery and T1583 Resource Hijacking, as the attack consumes excessive system resources without requiring privileged access. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because it affects network infrastructure monitoring tools that process untrusted sFlow data from multiple sources, making it a prime target for resource exhaustion attacks.
The fix implemented in version 1.6.1 addresses this by introducing proper bounds checking on the attacker-controlled counts before slice allocation occurs. This ensures that memory allocations remain proportional to the actual available datagram content and prevents the exploitation of large integer values to trigger excessive resource consumption. Organizations should immediately upgrade to gopacket 1.6.1 or later to mitigate this vulnerability, particularly those operating network monitoring systems that process sFlow data from untrusted sources. The mitigation strategy also includes implementing network-level filtering to limit sFlow traffic where possible and monitoring for unusual memory allocation patterns in affected systems.