Cyber Resilience

CVE-2024-21609

Juniper Junos ≤ 20.4

Published
12 April 2024
Modified
10 April 2025
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v4 7.1
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:A/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:L/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
EPSS Score 0.0029 22th percentile
Risk Priority 35 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2024-21609 is a high-severity Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime (CWE-401) vulnerability in Juniper Junos. Its CVSS base score is 7.1 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 22th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime vulnerability in the IKE daemon (iked) of Juniper Networks Junos OS on MX Series with SPC3, and SRX Series allows an administratively adjacent attacker which is able to successfully establish IPsec tunnels…

more

to cause a Denial of Service (DoS). If specific values for the IPsec parameters local-ip, remote-ip, remote ike-id, and traffic selectors are sent from the peer, a memory leak occurs during every IPsec SA rekey which is carried out with a specific message sequence. This will eventually result in an iked process crash and restart. The iked process memory consumption can be checked using the below command: user@host> show system processes extensive | grep iked PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND 56903 root 31 0 4016M 2543M CPU0 0 2:10 10.50% iked This issue affects Juniper Networks Junos OS: * All versions earlier than 20.4R3-S9; * 21.2 versions earlier than 21.2R3-S7; * 21.3 versions earlier than 21.3R3-S5; * 21.4 versions earlier than 21.4R3-S4; * 22.1 versions earlier than 22.1R3-S3; * 22.2 versions earlier than 22.2R3-S2; * 22.3 versions earlier than 22.3R3; * 22.4 versions earlier than 22.4R3; * 23.2 versions earlier than 23.2R1-S2, 23.2R2.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.003 Application Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target resource intensive features of applications to cause a denial of service (DoS), denying availability to those applications.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-22417Same product: Juniper Junos
CVE-2025-30658Same product: Juniper Junos
CVE-2024-39540Same product: Juniper Csrx
CVE-2024-39550Same product: Juniper Junos
CVE-2025-30647Same product: Juniper Junos
CVE-2024-47493Same product: Juniper Junos
CVE-2026-33775Same product: Juniper Junos
CVE-2023-44193Same product: Juniper Junos
CVE-2026-33782Same product: Juniper Junos
CVE-2023-22410Same product: Juniper Junos

Affected Assets

juniper
junos
20.4, 21.2, 21.3, 21.4, 22.1 · ≤ 20.4

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation (static analysis, fuzzing, or runtime leak detection) directly finds missing deallocation.

Requiring documented development standards and tools can mandate memory-management disciplines that avoid leaks at introduction.

Engineering principles applied during development can require explicit resource-release patterns that stop memory leaks from being coded.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly enforce proper memory allocation/deallocation via coding standards, reviews, and tooling.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

finds

Security testing in development can detect unreleased memory, providing partial coverage of the weakness.

prevents

Secure development life cycle mandates memory-management practices that reduce missing-release defects.

prevents

Application security requirements can specify explicit memory-release rules, partially mitigating the weakness.

prevents

Secure system architecture and engineering principles include resource-management guidelines that address memory leaks.

prevents

Secure coding standards directly require proper allocation/deallocation, covering most of this weakness.

finds

Capacity management may detect memory exhaustion symptoms but does not prevent the coding flaw.

References