F5 BIG-IP up to 17.1.2 Security Policy race condition

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in F5 BIG-IP up to 17.1.2. It has been classified as critical. This affects an unknown function of the component Security Policy Handler. The manipulation leads to race condition. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2026-22548. The attack may be initiated remotely. There is no available exploit. Upgrading the affected component is recommended.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in F5 BIG-IP up to 17.1.2 and classified as critical. This issue affects an unknown code block of the component Security Policy Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a race condition vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-362. The product contains a code sequence that can run concurrently with other code, and the code sequence requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence that is operating concurrently. Impacted is availability. The summary by CVE is:

When a BIG-IP Advanced WAF or ASM security policy is configured on a virtual server, undisclosed requests along with conditions beyond the attacker's control can cause the bd process to terminate.  Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.

It is possible to read the advisory at my.f5.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-22548 since 01/21/2026. The exploitation is known to be difficult. The attack may be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is needed for a successful exploitation. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 02/06/2026).

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 298035 (F5 Networks BIG-IP : BIG-IP Advanced WAF and ASM vulnerability (K000158072)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 17.1.3 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (298035). Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Firewall Software

Vendor

• F5

Name

• BIG-IP

Version

• 17.1.0
• 17.1.1
• 17.1.2

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://f5.com/

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

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