CVE-2026-15166

Analyzed Analyzed - Analysis Complete

IEEE 802.11 Protocol Dissector DoS in Wireshark

Publication date: 2026-07-08

Last updated on: 2026-07-09

Assigner: GitLab Inc.

Description

IEEE 802.11 protocol dissector crash in Wireshark 4.6.0 to 4.6.6 and 4.4.0 to 4.4.16 allows denial of service

CVSS Scores

EPSS Scores

Probability:
Percentile:

Meta Information

Published

2026-07-08

Last Modified

2026-07-09

Generated

2026-07-15

AI Q&A

2026-07-09

EPSS Evaluated

2026-07-14

NVD

CVE-2026-15166

Affected Vendors & Products

Vendor	Product	Version / Range
wireshark	wireshark	From 4.4.0 (inc) to 4.4.17 (exc)
wireshark	wireshark	From 4.6.0 (inc) to 4.6.7 (exc)

Helpful Resources

Exploitability

CWE

KEV

CWE ID	Description
CWE-121	A stack-based buffer overflow condition is a condition where the buffer being overwritten is allocated on the stack (i.e., is a local variable or, rarely, a parameter to a function).

Attack-Flow Graph

Executive Summary

This vulnerability is a crash in the IEEE 802.11 protocol dissector component of Wireshark versions 4.6.0 to 4.6.6 and 4.4.0 to 4.4.16. It allows an attacker to cause the application to crash, resulting in a denial of service.

Impact Analysis

The impact of this vulnerability is a denial of service condition. An attacker could exploit this flaw to crash Wireshark, disrupting its normal operation and potentially causing loss of monitoring or analysis capabilities.

Detection Guidance

The vulnerability involves a crash in Wireshark's IEEE 802.11 protocol dissector triggered by malformed packet trace files. Detection involves monitoring for crashes or abnormal behavior in Wireshark when analyzing 802.11 traffic or capture files.

Since the issue is triggered by malformed packet traces, you can attempt to identify suspicious or malformed 802.11 frames in your capture files.

A practical approach is to use tshark or Wireshark to analyze capture files for malformed EAPOL-Key frames or unusually large Key Length fields that could trigger the vulnerability.

Use tshark to filter IEEE 802.11 EAPOL-Key frames: tshark -r capture.pcap -Y "eapol"
Inspect Key Length fields in EAPOL-Key frames for abnormally large values that exceed expected sizes.
Monitor Wireshark or tshark for crashes or denial of service symptoms when processing 802.11 capture files.

Compliance Impact

The provided information does not specify any direct impact of the CVE-2026-15166 vulnerability on compliance with common standards and regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA.

Mitigation Strategies

The primary mitigation step is to upgrade Wireshark to a fixed version that addresses this vulnerability.

Upgrade Wireshark to version 4.6.7 or later if you are using versions 4.6.0 to 4.6.6.
Upgrade Wireshark to version 4.4.17 or later if you are using versions 4.4.0 to 4.4.16.

Avoid opening or processing untrusted or suspicious 802.11 capture files until the upgrade is applied.

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