CVE-2026-59692 in Enterprise Linux 10
Summary
by MITRE • 07/09/2026
A stack buffer overflow vulnerability was found in GStreamer's DTLS plugin. During a DTLS handshake, the peer certificate Subject Distinguished Name is printed into a fixed-size 2048-byte stack buffer without bounds checking. A remote unauthenticated attacker can send a certificate with an oversized Subject DN that exceeds the buffer, causing a stack buffer overflow and process crash, resulting in denial of service.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/09/2026
This vulnerability resides within GStreamer's DTLS plugin implementation where a classic stack buffer overflow occurs during the secure communication handshake process. The flaw manifests when the system attempts to process peer certificate information, specifically the Subject Distinguished Name field, which is written to a fixed-size 2048-byte stack buffer without any bounds validation mechanisms. This represents a fundamental security oversight that violates core software engineering principles and aligns with CWE-121 stack-based buffer overflow conditions. The vulnerability operates at the protocol level where DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security) handshakes are established, making it particularly dangerous as it can be exploited during normal network communication flows.
The attack vector requires a remote unauthenticated adversary who can manipulate the certificate presented during the DTLS handshake process. When such an attacker presents a certificate containing a Subject Distinguished Name that exceeds the 2048-byte buffer capacity, the excessive data overflows into adjacent stack memory locations. This overflow corrupts the stack frame and can potentially overwrite return addresses or other critical control data structures, leading to unpredictable behavior and ultimately process termination. The vulnerability specifically targets the certificate processing component of DTLS implementations where certificate validation and display operations occur.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple denial of service as it represents a potential pathway for more sophisticated attacks. While the immediate effect is process crash and service disruption, the underlying buffer overflow condition creates opportunities for arbitrary code execution if proper exploit mitigation techniques are not in place. The vulnerability affects systems that rely on GStreamer's DTLS capabilities for secure media streaming or communication protocols, potentially impacting multimedia applications, VoIP systems, and network services that depend on this library. Organizations using affected versions of GStreamer may experience service interruptions during normal operations when legitimate peers present certificates with unexpectedly large subject distinguished names.
Mitigation strategies should focus on immediate patching of the GStreamer library to address the buffer overflow condition through proper bounds checking implementation. The fix must ensure that certificate Subject Distinguished Name processing validates input size before copying data to the fixed-size buffer, preventing overflow conditions. Organizations should also implement network-level monitoring to detect unusual certificate presentations and consider certificate validation policies that limit the size of subject distinguished names accepted by systems. Additionally, deployment of modern exploit mitigation techniques including stack canaries, address space layout randomization, and non-executable stack protections can reduce the effectiveness of potential exploitation attempts. This vulnerability highlights the importance of input validation in cryptographic libraries and demonstrates how seemingly benign certificate processing operations can become attack vectors when proper bounds checking is absent. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this as a privilege escalation technique through software vulnerabilities, specifically targeting the application layer where secure communication protocols are implemented.