SSH Protocol Dissector Crash in Wireshark

Compliance Impact

The vulnerability described in CVE-2026-15171 is a denial of service issue caused by a crash in Wireshark's SSH protocol dissector when processing malformed packets. It does not involve unauthorized access, data leakage, or modification of sensitive information.

Because this vulnerability results in a crash rather than a breach of confidentiality or integrity, it does not directly impact compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA, which primarily focus on protecting personal and sensitive data.

However, denial of service conditions could indirectly affect operational availability, which may be a consideration under some regulatory frameworks that require maintaining system availability and reliability.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability is triggered by opening a specially crafted pcapng file containing malformed SSH Decryption Secrets metadata in Wireshark. Detection involves identifying untrusted or suspicious pcapng files that contain malformed SSH key-log lines with empty or excessively long hex tokens.

Since the vulnerability is related to Wireshark processing of capture files rather than live network traffic, detection on a network level is limited. Instead, monitoring and validating capture files before opening them in Wireshark is recommended.

No specific commands are provided in the resources for detecting this vulnerability on a system or network.

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Mitigation Strategies

The primary mitigation step is to upgrade Wireshark to version 4.6.7, 4.4.17, or later, where the vulnerability has been fixed.

Avoid opening untrusted or suspicious pcapng files that could contain malformed SSH Decryption Secrets metadata.

If upgrading immediately is not possible, exercise caution when handling capture files from untrusted sources to prevent denial of service caused by the crash.

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Executive Summary

This vulnerability is a crash in the SSH 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 a denial of service by triggering the crash.

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Impact Analysis

The impact of this vulnerability is a denial of service condition. An attacker can cause Wireshark to crash, potentially disrupting network traffic analysis or monitoring activities.

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