CVE-2026-33846

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Last Modified: UTC

Important Important Impact What does this mean?
7.5 CVSS v3 Base Score

Description

A heap buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the DTLS handshake fragment reassembly logic of GnuTLS. The issue arises in merge_handshake_packet() where incoming handshake fragments are matched and merged based solely on handshake type, without validating that the message_length field remains consistent across all fragments of the same logical message. An attacker can exploit this by sending crafted DTLS fragments with conflicting message_length values, causing the implementation to allocate a buffer based on a smaller initial fragment and subsequently write beyond its bounds using larger, inconsistent fragments. Because the merge operation does not enforce proper bounds checking against the allocated buffer size, this results in an out-of-bounds write on the heap. The vulnerability is remotely exploitable without authentication via the DTLS handshake path and can lead to application crashes or potential memory corruption.

Statement

This vulnerability should be classified as an important flaw rather than moderate because it exposes a pre-authentication, remotely reachable heap buffer overflow in the DTLS handshake processing path, which is part of the core protocol handling logic and commonly exposed in network-facing services. The flaw enables an attacker to inject controlled data at attacker-chosen offsets and sizes beyond allocated heap boundaries by exploiting inconsistent message_length handling across fragments, effectively creating a constrained but meaningful heap write primitive. Unlike benign memory safety bugs, this condition is deterministically triggerable with a small number of crafted packets and no environmental dependencies for denial-of-service, and it targets a long-lived parsing state where memory corruption can affect adjacent heap structures. Even if reliable code execution requires additional heap manipulation or layout knowledge, the combination of remote reachability, lack of authentication, controlled memory corruption capability, and trivial crashability significantly elevates the risk profile beyond moderate severity. In real-world deployments, such primitives are often sufficient to enable heap grooming and exploitation chains, particularly in services that repeatedly process attacker-controlled input, making this a materially important security flaw.

Mitigation

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.

Additional Information

External References

Content from www.cve.org is not included.https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-33846

Content from nvd.nist.gov is not included.https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-33846

Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata

Products / Services Components State Errata
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 gnutls Fixed RHSA-2026:20613
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 Extended Update Support gnutls Fixed RHSA-2026:26409
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 gnutls Affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 gnutls Affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 gnutls Fixed RHSA-2026:20611
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 gnutls Fixed RHSA-2026:20612
Red Hat Hardened Images gnutls-main Fixed RHSA-2026:13274
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 rhcos Affected
Red Hat Update Infrastructure 5 rhui5/cds-rhel9 Fixed RHSA-2026:26319
Red Hat Update Infrastructure 5 rhui5/haproxy-rhel9 Fixed RHSA-2026:26319
Unless explicitly stated as not affected, all previous versions of packages in any minor update stream of a product listed here should be assumed vulnerable, although may not have been subject to full analysis.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authorities (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown Red Hat NVD
CVSS v3 Base Score 7.5
Attack Vector Network
Attack Complexity Low
Privileges Required None
User Interaction None
Scope Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact None
Integrity Impact None
Availability Impact High

CVSS v3 Vector

Red Hat CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?

 For open source software shipped by multiple vendors, the CVSS base scores may vary for each vendor's version depending on the version they ship, how they ship it, the platform, and even how the software is compiled. This makes scoring of vulnerabilities difficult for third-party vulnerability databases such as NVD that only provide a single CVSS base score for each vulnerability. Red Hat scores reflect how a vulnerability affects our products specifically.

For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/762393.

My product is listed as "Under investigation" or "Affected", when will Red Hat release a fix for this vulnerability?
  • "Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • "Affected" means that our Analysis Team has determined that this product is affected by this vulnerability and might release a fix to address this in the near future.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Will not fix"?

 A "will not fix" status means that a fix for an affected product version is not planned or not possible due to complexity, which may create additional risk.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Fix deferred"?

 A deferred status means that a fix for an affected product version is not guaranteed due to higher-priority development work.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.
  • Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on their complexity or limited lifecycle support. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

What is a mitigation?

 A mitigation is an action that can be taken to reduce the impact of a security vulnerability, without deploying any fixes.

I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?

 The listed products were found to include one or more of the components that this vulnerability affects. These products underwent a thorough evaluation to determine their affectedness by this vulnerability. Note that layered products (such as container-based offerings) that consume affected components from any of the products listed in this table may be affected and are not represented.

Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?

 In order to maintain code stability and compatibility, Red Hat usually does not rebase packages to entirely new versions. Instead, we backport fixes and new features to an older version of the package we distribute. This can result in some security scanners that only consider the package version to report the package as vulnerable. To avoid this, we suggest that you use an approved vulnerability scanner from our This content is not included.Red Hat Vulnerability Scanner Certification program.

My product is listed as "Out of Support Scope". What does this mean?

 When a product is listed as "Out of Support Scope", it means a vulnerability with the impact level assigned to this CVE is no longer covered by its current support lifecycle phase. The product has been identified to contain the impacted component, but analysis to determine whether it is affected or not by this vulnerability was not performed. The product should be assumed to be affected. Customers are advised to apply any mitigation options documented on this page, consider removing or disabling the impacted component, or upgrade to a supported version of the product that has an update available.