Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-3203

Medium

Published: 25 February 2026

Published
25 February 2026
Modified
26 February 2026
KEV Added
—
Patch
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CVSS Score v3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0003 8.0th percentile
Risk Priority 11 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2026-3203 is a medium-severity Buffer Over-read (CWE-126) vulnerability in Wireshark Wireshark. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Malicious File (T1204.002); ranked at the 8.0th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) and CM-7 (Least Functionality).

Deeper analysis

CVE-2026-3203 affects the RF4CE Profile protocol dissector in Wireshark versions 4.6.0 through 4.6.3 and 4.4.0 through 4.4.13. The vulnerability causes a crash in the dissector, enabling a denial of service condition. It is rated with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.5 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H) and is associated with CWE-126.

The attack requires local access and user interaction, with low complexity and no privileges. An attacker can exploit it by tricking a user into opening a specially crafted packet capture file containing malformed RF4CE Profile traffic using the affected Wireshark versions. Successful exploitation results in a crash of the Wireshark application, leading to high-impact denial of service on availability with no impact on confidentiality or integrity.

Wireshark's security advisory WNPA-SEC-2026-07 at https://www.wireshark.org/security/wnpa-sec-2026-07.html and the related GitLab issue tracker entry at https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/issues/21009 provide further details on the vulnerability. These resources cover the issue discovery and resolution in Wireshark's development process.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

RF4CE Profile protocol dissector crash in Wireshark 4.6.0 to 4.6.3 and 4.4.0 to 4.4.13 allows denial of service

CWE(s)
CWE-126NVD-CWE-noinfo

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1204.002 Malicious File Execution
An adversary may rely upon a user opening a malicious file in order to gain execution.
attack.mitre.org →
T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
attack.mitre.org →
Why these techniques?

Vulnerability triggered by user opening malicious .pcap file (T1204.002) resulting in application crash via buffer over-read exploitation (T1499.004).

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v18.1

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2025-1492Same product: Wireshark Wireshark
CVE-2026-5657Same product: Wireshark Wireshark
CVE-2026-5655Same product: Wireshark Wireshark
CVE-2026-6519Same product: Wireshark Wireshark
CVE-2026-5653Same product: Wireshark Wireshark
CVE-2026-7375Same product: Wireshark Wireshark
CVE-2026-5654Same product: Wireshark Wireshark
CVE-2026-6520Same product: Wireshark Wireshark
CVE-2026-3201Same product: Wireshark Wireshark
CVE-2026-6868Same product: Wireshark Wireshark

Affected Assets

wireshark
wireshark
4.4.0 — 4.4.14 · 4.6.0 — 4.6.4

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

SI-2 Flaw Remediation good match
prevent

Directly requires applying the Wireshark patch that fixes the RF4CE dissector crash before a crafted capture file can be opened.

CM-7 Least Functionality partial match
prevent

Limits the protocol dissectors and file-processing features available in Wireshark, reducing the attack surface for malformed RF4CE traffic.

SI-4 System Monitoring partial match
detect

Enables monitoring for abnormal Wireshark process termination or crashes triggered by opening malicious packet captures.

References