Memory leak in Snort - CVE-2026-76489
Published: October 21, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU156721
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 6.9 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2026-76489
CWE-ID: CWE-401
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service by exhausting memory and triggering an unexpected restart of the Snort 3 Detection Engine, interrupting packet inspection.
The vulnerability exists due to a failure to release memory caused by incomplete error checking in the Snort 3 memory management implementation when processing files. A remote attacker can send a large number of files for processing to exhaust memory and trigger an unexpected engine restart that interrupts packet inspection.
Open Source Snort 3 is affected only when configured to parse Netflow Protocol connections.
Affected software
Snort
How to mitigate CVE-2026-76489
Install security update from vendor's website.
Snort - update to 3.12.4.0