Review reviewHigh

CVE-2026-12413

The Libreswan Project libreswan

An invalidly formatted IKEv2 fragment causes the Libreswan pluto daemon to crash and restart. Continued exploitation would cause a denial of service. The function reassemble_v2_incoming_fragments() would ignore unknown outer payloads but still store these in a fixed size array msg_digest.digest[PAYLIMIT]. An off-by-one error in the assertion PASSERT(logger, md->digest_roof < elemsof(md->digest)) causes the daemon to abort. No remote code execution is possible. Any configuration that allows IKEv2 connections that do not set fragmentation=no are vulnerable. IKEv1 is not affected.

CVSS
7.5
EPSS
0.60%
45.3% percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
Published
2026.07.03
PRIORITY ASSESSMENT

Review review

The CVSS severity warrants an early asset and exposure review.

Known exploitationNot established by KEV
Exploit probability0.60%
Technical severityCVSS 7.5

Vulnerability overview

An invalidly formatted IKEv2 fragment causes the Libreswan pluto daemon to crash and restart. Continued exploitation would cause a denial of service. The function reassemble_v2_incoming_fragments() would ignore unknown outer payloads but still store these in a fixed size array msg_digest.digest[PAYLIMIT]. An off-by-one error in the assertion PASSERT(logger, md->digest_roof < elemsof(md->digest)) causes the daemon to abort. No remote code execution is possible. Any configuration that allows IKEv2 connections that do not set fragmentation=no are vulnerable. IKEv1 is not affected.

Affected product and versions

Product
The Libreswan Project libreswan
Affected versions
4.6, >= 4.6 < 5.3.1
Fixed versions
5.3.1

Recommended response sequence

Confirm exposure before applying a vendor-supported change.

Full remediation guide
  1. 1
    Identify

    Confirm that The Libreswan Project libreswan and an affected version are present.

  2. 2
    Prioritize

    Combine exploitation signals with asset exposure and business criticality.

  3. 3
    Remediate

    Follow the vendor advisory or supported update path and preserve rollback options.

  4. 4
    Verify

    Recheck the version, service health, access paths, and relevant logs.

Technical data

CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE
CWE-193, CWE-617