CVE-2021-0292 Junos OS Evolved: Memory leak in arpd or ndp processes can lead to Denial of Service (DoS)
A local attacker can exhaust memory in ARP and NDP processes on Juniper Junos OS Evolved, causing a denial of service and traffic loss.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2021-0292?
CVE-2021-0292 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Juniper Junos Os Evolved, published on 15 Jul 2021. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
An Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in the ARP daemon (arpd) and Network Discovery Protocol (ndp) process of Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved allows a malicious attacker on the local network to consume memory resources, ultimately resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS) condition. Link-layer functions such as IPv4 and/or IPv6 address resolution may be impacted, leading to traffic loss. The processes do not recover on their own and must be manually restarted. Changes in memory usage can be monitored using the following shell commands (header shown for clarity): user@router:/var/log# ps aux | grep arpd USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 31418 59.0 0.7 *5702564* 247952 ? xxx /usr/sbin/arpd --app-name arpd -I object_select --shared-objects-mode 3 user@router:/var/log# ps aux | grep arpd USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 31418 49.1 1.0 *5813156* 351184 ? xxx /usr/sbin/arpd --app-name arpd -I object_select --shared-objects-mode 3 Memory usage can be monitored for the ndp process in a similar fashion: user@router:/var/log# ps aux | grep ndp USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 14935 0.0 0.1 *5614052* 27256 ? Ssl Jun15 0:17 /usr/sbin/ndp -I no_tab_chk,object_select --app-name ndp --shared-obje user@router:/var/log# ps aux | grep ndp USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 14935 0.0 0.1 *5725164* 27256 ? Ssl Jun15 0:17 /usr/sbin/ndp -I no_tab_chk,object_select --app-name ndp --shared-obje This issue affects Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved: 19.4 versions prior to 19.4R2-S3-EVO; 20.1 versions prior to 20.1R2-S4-EVO; all versions of 20.2-EVO. This issue does not affect Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved versions prior to 19.4R2-EVO.
Weakness: CWE-400
Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-0292?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Juniper Junos Os Evolved.
How do I fix CVE-2021-0292?
No fix has been published for CVE-2021-0292 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2021-0292 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-0292 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Juniper Junos Os Evolved
- CVE-2026-21902 Junos OS Evolved: PTX Series: A vulnerability allows a unauthenticated, network-based attacker to execute code as root
- CVE-2023-28983 Junos OS Evolved: Shell Injection vulnerability in the gNOI server
- CVE-2025-21599 Denial of service in Junos OS Evolved
- CVE-2024-47502 Junos OS Evolved: TCP session state is not always cleared on the Routing Engine leading to DoS
- CVE-2024-39531 Junos OS Evolved: ACX 7000 Series: Protocol specific DDoS configuration affects other protocols
Sources
Also known as GHSA-grjp-mm84-7748.