# CVE-2021-31368: Denial of service in Junos OS

> An unauthenticated attacker can cause a denial of service on Juniper EX and ACX devices by flooding the out-of-band management port with traffic.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 19 Oct 2021
- **Updated:** 16 Sep 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-ccf5-w648-6p79

## What is CVE-2021-31368?

CVE-2021-31368 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Juniper Junos, published on 19 Oct 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

An Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in the kernel of Juniper Networks JUNOS OS allows an unauthenticated network based attacker to cause 100% CPU load and the device to become unresponsive by sending a flood of traffic to the out-of-band management ethernet port. Continued receipted of a flood will create a sustained Denial of Service (DoS) condition. Once the flood subsides the system will recover by itself. An indication that the system is affected by this issue would be that kernel and netisr process are shown to be using a lot of CPU cycles like in the following example output: user@host> show system processes extensive ... PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND 16 root -72 - 0K 304K WAIT 1 839:40 88.96% intr{swi1: netisr 0} 0 root 97 - 0K 160K RUN 1 732:43 87.99% kernel{bcm560xgmac0 que} This issue affects Juniper Networks JUNOS OS on EX2300 Series, EX3400 Series, and ACX710: All versions prior to 18.1R3-S13; 18.2 versions prior to 18.2R3-S8; 18.3 versions prior to 18.3R3-S5; 18.4 versions prior to 18.4R2-S8, 18.4R3-S9; 19.1 versions prior to 19.1R3-S5; 19.2 versions prior to 19.2R1-S7, 19.2R3-S3; 19.3 versions prior to 19.3R2-S6, 19.3R3-S2; 19.4 versions prior to 19.4R1-S4, 19.4R3-S3; 20.1 versions prior to 20.1R2-S2, 20.1R3; 20.2 versions prior to 20.2R3; 20.3 versions prior to 20.3R2-S1, 20.3R3; 20.4 versions prior to 20.4R2.

Weakness: CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-31368?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Juniper Junos.

## How do I fix CVE-2021-31368?

No fix has been published for CVE-2021-31368 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2021-31368 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-31368 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Juniper Junos

- [CVE-2023-36845](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-36845/): Juniper Junos OS EX Series and SRX Series PHP External Variable Modification (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2020-1631](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-1631/): Juniper Junos OS Path Traversal (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2025-21590](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-21590/): Juniper Junos OS Improper Isolation or Compartmentalization (medium 6.7, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2023-36851](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-36851/): Juniper Junos OS SRX Series Missing Authentication for Critical Function (medium 5.3, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2023-36844](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-36844/): Juniper Junos OS EX Series PHP External Variable Modification (medium 5.3, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2021-31368 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2021-31368 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Juniper Junos, published on 19 Oct 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-31368 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Juniper Junos. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-31368/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-31368/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-31368
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-31368
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2021-31368

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-31368/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.