Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-87078

Published
22 September 2026
Modified
22 September 2026
CVSS Score v3.1 9.1
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0065 49th percentile
Risk Priority 68 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-2026-87078 is a critical-severity Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime (CWE-401) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 9.1 (Critical).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 49th 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

Net::IDN::Punycode versions from 2.302 before 2.590 for Perl leak the output buffer on every rejected label in decode_punycode. The XS backend allocates the scalar it returns before it validates the input, sizing the buffer at twice the input length. The…

more

scalar is released only on the success path, so each of the three croaks that reject a label leaves the scalar and its buffer allocated. Nothing bounds the label length in the to-Unicode direction, since the 63-byte DNS limit is checked only when converting to ASCII. Only the XS backend is affected. A sender who supplies invalid labels grows the process by twice the label length per rejected call, with no successful call needed.

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-2026-1757Shared CWE-401
CVE-2023-53334Shared CWE-401
CVE-2024-50214Shared CWE-401
CVE-2026-64129Shared CWE-401
CVE-2023-53375Shared CWE-401
CVE-2026-23147Shared CWE-401
CVE-2025-61146Shared CWE-401
CVE-2026-23091Shared CWE-401
CVE-2026-53087Shared CWE-401
CVE-2025-71268Shared CWE-401

Affected Assets

—
Punycode
inferred from references and description; NVD did not file a CPE for this CVE

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 partial 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.

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

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

finds

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

References