A recent update from the Wireshark Foundation addresses critical vulnerabilities impacting the widely used network protocol analyzer, potentially exposing users to denial-of-service conditions.
The vulnerability lies within the core parsing of specific network protocols using dissectors like BPv7 and Kafka. These dissectors, crucial for accurately analyzing network traffic, have been found vulnerable to manipulation by malicious actors. This allows attackers to exploit a flaw in the dissector’s behavior, injecting malformed packets into network streams or trace files. These attacks can crash the application, leading to service disruption for users relying on Wireshark for continuous monitoring and analysis.
The Update:
Wireshark 4.6.1 addresses these vulnerabilities with several key improvements:
- Security Patches: The update includes critical patches that resolve two major issues identified in BPv7 and Kafka dissectors. Specifically, the vulnerability in BPv7 is tracked as wnpa-sec-2025-05, causing crashes upon injection of malicious data. A similar flaw was found in the Kafka dissector, designated wnpa-sec-2025-06, leading to crashes and denial-of-service attacks through data corruption.
- Stability Improvements: In addition to security fixes, version 4.6.1 resolves a variety of stability issues that impact protocol analysis. These improvements address incorrect retransmission mode interpretation in the L2CAP dissector, as well as incorrect labeling of PK algorithms as HIT lengths for DNS HIP.
The Impact:
- Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks: The vulnerabilities can be exploited to crash Wireshark application and disrupt critical operations within security operations centers (SOCs) and network administrator environments.
- Network Monitoring Disruption: Network administrators and security analysts rely on Wireshark for comprehensive analysis, traffic monitoring, and security debugging. These vulnerabilities could have significant implications if exploited by malicious actors.
Upgrading is Essential:
Given the seriousness of these vulnerabilities, it’s crucial that users immediately upgrade to version 4.6.1 or 4.4.11 (which addresses many of the issues in a backward-compatible manner). The update is readily available for download from the Wireshark Foundation website and through package managers for Linux and Unix distributions.
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By staying informed about these updates and vulnerabilities, you can effectively mitigate potential risks and maintain a secure environment. The Wireshark Foundation continues to work diligently on improving security features and addressing new challenges in network security analysis.