CVE-2026-79973 in Secure Connect Gateway
Summary
by MITRE • 09/09/2026
Dell SCG 5.0 Appliance versions prior to 5.36.00.16 and Dell SCG 5.0 Application versions prior to 5.36.00.00, contains an Unsynchronized Access to Shared Data in a Multithreaded Context vulnerability. A low privileged attacker with remote access could potentially exploit this vulnerability, leading to denial of service.
If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/09/2026
The identified security flaw resides within Dell SCG 5.0 Appliance versions prior to 5.36.00.16 and the corresponding Application versions prior to 5.36.00.00, representing a critical class of concurrency-related defects known as unsynchronized access to shared data in multithreaded environments. This vulnerability stems from improper handling of concurrent operations where multiple threads attempt to read or write to common memory locations without adequate synchronization mechanisms such as locks, semaphores, or atomic operations. In complex enterprise storage management systems like the Dell SCG platform, background processes frequently interact with shared configuration states, session data, and resource allocation tables. When these interactions are not properly serialized, race conditions can occur, leading to unpredictable system behavior that undermines the integrity of the application state.
From a technical perspective, this flaw aligns closely with Common Weakness Enumeration identifier CWE-362, which defines concurrent execution using shared resources with improper synchronization. The absence of proper locking mechanisms allows threads to interleave their operations in ways that corrupt data structures or leave them in an inconsistent state. For instance, one thread might begin updating a critical configuration parameter while another thread reads the same parameter mid-update, resulting in partial writes or logical errors. Over time, these race conditions can accumulate, causing memory corruption, stack overflows, or infinite loops within the application logic. The severity of this issue is compounded by its potential for remote exploitation, as it does not require physical access to the hardware but rather network connectivity to the management interface.
The operational impact of exploiting this vulnerability centers on denial of service conditions that can severely disrupt storage operations and administrative control. A low-privileged attacker with remote access capabilities can trigger these race conditions through crafted requests or sustained concurrent connections designed to maximize thread contention. Successful exploitation may lead to application crashes, unresponsive services, or complete system hangs, effectively rendering the Dell SCG appliance unavailable for managing attached storage arrays. This disruption impacts business continuity by preventing administrators from performing essential tasks such as provisioning volumes, monitoring health status, or executing failover procedures. In high-availability environments, this could trigger unnecessary failovers or data access interruptions depending on how the underlying cluster handles the loss of management connectivity.
This vulnerability is further contextualized within the MITRE ATT&CK framework under techniques related to resource exhaustion and service disruption, specifically mapping to T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service variants that leverage application layer flaws rather than network-level attacks. The ability for a low-privileged user to trigger such significant instability highlights insufficient privilege separation in the vulnerability's exploitation path, suggesting that critical internal operations are accessible without adequate validation or rate limiting controls. Attackers can automate this process using scripts that generate high volumes of concurrent requests targeting specific endpoints known to handle shared state updates, thereby increasing the probability of triggering the race condition within a reasonable timeframe.
Mitigation strategies must prioritize immediate patching as outlined in Dell Security Advisory DSAR-5018 or equivalent official guidance. Administrators should upgrade both the appliance firmware and application components to versions 5.36.00.16 and later, which include code changes implementing proper synchronization primitives such as mutex locks around critical sections of shared data access. Until patching is feasible, organizations should implement network-level controls including strict firewall rules that restrict management interface access to only authorized administrative subnets. Additionally enabling rate limiting on API endpoints can reduce the likelihood of triggering race conditions by throttling high-frequency concurrent requests from any single source. Regular security audits focusing on authentication and authorization policies will help ensure that low-privileged accounts do not possess unnecessary permissions for operations involving shared resource manipulation, thereby reducing the attack surface available to potential adversaries seeking to disrupt service availability.