CVE-2026-24401
Description
A flaw was found in Avahi, a system that enables devices to discover services on a local network. A remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted mDNS (multicast Domain Name System) response containing a recursive CNAME (Canonical Name) record. This triggers an uncontrolled recursion within the avahi-daemon process, leading to stack exhaustion and causing the service to crash. This results in a denial of service (DoS) for affected systems.
Statement
This MODERATE impact flaw in Avahi's avahi-daemon can lead to a denial of service. An attacker on the local network could send a specially crafted, unsolicited mDNS response containing a recursive CNAME record, causing unbounded recursion and a crash. This affects systems where Avahi's record browsers explicitly use multicast, such as those utilizing nss-mdns.
Mitigation
To mitigate this issue, disable the avahi-daemon service if mDNS/DNS-SD functionality is not required on the system.
bash
sudo systemctl disable --now avahi-daemon.service
sudo systemctl mask avahi-daemon.service
Disabling this service may impact applications relying on mDNS for local network service discovery. A system reboot or service reload may be required for the changes to take full effect.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 6.5 | 6.5 | 6.5 |
| Attack Vector | Network | Network | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | Low | Low |
| Privileges Required | None | None | None |
| User Interaction | Required | Required | Required |
| Scope | Unchanged | Unchanged | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | None | None | None |
| Integrity Impact | None | None | None |
| Availability Impact | High | High | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)
Resources including CPU, memory, and stack memory could be rapidly consumed or exhausted, eventually leading to an exit or crash.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Application Data
In some cases, an application's interpreter might kill a process or thread that appears to be consuming too much resources, such as with PHP's memory_limit setting. When the interpreter kills the process/thread, it might report an error containing detailed information such as the application's installation path.
Frequently Asked Questions
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