Wireshark up to 4.4.14/4.6.4 RDP Protocol Dissector heap-based overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability identified as critical has been detected in Wireshark up to 4.4.14/4.6.4. The impacted element is an unknown function of the component RDP Protocol Dissector. Performing a manipulation results in heap-based overflow. This vulnerability is identified as CVE-2026-5405. The attack can be initiated remotely. There is not any exploit available. You should upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Wireshark up to 4.4.14/4.6.4. It has been classified as critical. This affects some unknown functionality of the component RDP Protocol Dissector. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a heap-based overflow vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-122. A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc(). This is going to have an impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

RDP protocol dissector crash in Wireshark 4.6.0 to 4.6.4 and 4.4.0 to 4.4.14 allows denial of service and possible code execution

The weakness was released by Duc Anh Nguyen as 21105. It is possible to read the advisory at wireshark.org. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-5405 since 04/02/2026. The exploitability is told to be difficult. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. No form of authentication is needed for exploitation. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 313009 (Debian dsa-6249 : libwireshark-data - security update), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 4.4.15 or 4.6.5 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (313009) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2026-1311). Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Affected

• Open Source Wireshark

Productinfo

Type

• Packet Analyzer Software

Name

• Wireshark

Version

• 4.4.0
• 4.4.1
• 4.4.2
• 4.4.3
• 4.4.4
• 4.4.5
• 4.4.6
• 4.4.7
• 4.4.8
• 4.4.9
• 4.4.10
• 4.4.11
• 4.4.12
• 4.4.13
• 4.4.14
• 4.6.0
• 4.6.1
• 4.6.2
• 4.6.3
• 4.6.4

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://www.wireshark.org/

CPE 2.3info

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

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