Security Resilience

CVE-2026-86104

DoS in Watchguard Fireware 12.0 – 12.5.21

Published
30 September 2026
Modified
06 October 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v4 8.7
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/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 0.0036 29th percentile
Risk Priority 44 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2026-86104 is a high-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) vulnerability in Watchguard Fireware. Its CVSS base score is 8.7 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 29th 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 AC-10 (Concurrent Session Control) and AC-7 (Unsuccessful Logon Attempts) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

An uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in the Fireware OS login process (wgagent) allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service by sending a specially crafted request.

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.
T1499.002 Service Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target the different network services provided by systems to conduct a denial of service (DoS).
T1498 Network Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Network Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of targeted resources to users.
T1499.001 OS Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may launch a denial of service (DoS) attack targeting an endpoint's operating system (OS).
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.
T1498.001 Direct Network Flood Impact
Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by directly sending a high-volume of network traffic to a target.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-18105Same product: Watchguard Fireware
CVE-2026-86131Same product: Watchguard Fireware
CVE-2026-86133Same product: Watchguard Fireware
CVE-2026-86136Same product: Watchguard Fireware
CVE-2026-13224Same product: Watchguard Fireware
CVE-2026-86134Same product: Watchguard Fireware
CVE-2026-86128Same product: Watchguard Fireware
CVE-2026-86132Same product: Watchguard Fireware
CVE-2026-13046Same product: Watchguard Fireware
CVE-2026-18145Same product: Watchguard Fireware

Affected Assets

watchguard
fireware
12.0 — 12.5.21 · 12.12 — 12.12.3 · 2025.0 — 2026.2.3

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

—

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

—

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 5 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)

—

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Directly enforces a hard limit on concurrent sessions, structurally preventing unbounded resource allocation.

Imposes a limit on consecutive invalid attempts, preventing one specific class of unbounded resource consumption.

Process isolation confines resource consumption to separate domains, reducing blast radius without stopping the root flaw.

SC-5 directly limits the effects of resource-exhaustion events that constitute uncontrolled consumption.

SC-6 enforces explicit allocation limits on resources, structurally preventing the weakness from occurring.

Input validation can reject or limit decompression of data whose expansion ratio exceeds safe thresholds.

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
blocks

Secure-development practices include input-validation and resource-limit checks that prevent improper handling of compressed data.

DE.CM-09 partial match
blocks

Runtime monitoring of compute resources can detect exhaustion caused by decompression bombs.

PR.IR-04 partial match
blocks

Capacity planning and monitoring directly limits the availability impact of data-amplification attacks.

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

Resource-utilization monitoring and alerting on bottlenecks or overloads limits the impact of denial-of-service or resource-exhaustion attacks.

finds

Security testing can uncover decompression-bomb vulnerabilities before release.

blocks

A.8.6's monitoring, stress-testing, projections, tuning, demand-reduction steps (e.g. optimizing queries, deleting obsolete data, restricting non-critical bandwidth) and capacity planning directly stop most uncontrolled consumption from being exploitable by keeping resources within safe bounds; the bounded remainder is algorithmic flaws (e.g. infinite loops, uncontrolled recursion) that no amount of capacity planning can prevent from exhausting a resource when triggered.

finds

Early notification of anomalous resource consumption or system malfunctions enables throttling or isolation before availability is lost.

blocks

Monitoring network service usage and applying controls to restrict access when necessary limits an attacker’s ability to consume excessive resources through unrestricted or unauthenticated service calls.

prevents

Secure coding practices directly require bounds checking and safe handling of compressed data.

Hardening callouts derived

Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (higher-evidence rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).

Oracle Linux 8 (2 rules)
  • V-248552 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770
  • V-248553 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770
Oracle Linux 9 (2 rules)
  • V-271710 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770
  • V-271709 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770
RHEL 8 (1 rule)
  • V-230244 RHEL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. blocks CWE-770

References