CVE-2023-28974 Denial of service in Junos OS
An unauthenticated adjacent attacker can cause a denial of service on Juniper MX Series devices by sending malformed ICMP packets, crashing the subscriber management process.
- 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-2023-28974?
CVE-2023-28974 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Juniper Junos, published on 17 Apr 2023. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
An Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions vulnerability in the bbe-smgd of Juniper Networks Junos OS allows an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause a Denial of Service (DoS). In a Broadband Edge / Subscriber Management scenario on MX Series when a specifically malformed ICMP packet addressed to the device is received from a subscriber the bbe-smgd will crash, affecting the subscriber sessions that are connecting, updating, or terminating. Continued receipt of such packets will lead to a sustained DoS condition. When this issue happens the below log can be seen if the traceoptions for the processes smg-service are enabled: BBE_TRACE(TRACE_LEVEL_INFO, "%s: Dropped unsupported ICMP PKT ... This issue affects Juniper Networks Junos OS on MX Series: All versions prior to 19.4R3-S11; 20.2 versions prior to 20.2R3-S7; 20.3 versions prior to 20.3R3-S6; 20.4 versions prior to 20.4R3-S6; 21.1 versions prior to 21.1R3-S4; 21.2 versions prior to 21.2R3-S4; 21.3 versions prior to 21.3R3-S3; 21.4 versions prior to 21.4R3-S2; 22.1 versions prior to 22.1R2-S2, 22.1R3; 22.2 versions prior to 22.2R2; 22.3 versions prior to 22.3R1-S2, 22.3R2.
Weakness: CWE-754
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-28974?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Juniper Junos.
How do I fix CVE-2023-28974?
No fix has been published for CVE-2023-28974 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-2023-28974 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-28974 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Juniper Junos
- CVE-2023-36845 Juniper Junos OS EX Series and SRX Series PHP External Variable Modification
- CVE-2020-1631 Juniper Junos OS Path Traversal
- CVE-2025-21590 Juniper Junos OS Improper Isolation or Compartmentalization
- CVE-2023-36851 Juniper Junos OS SRX Series Missing Authentication for Critical Function
- CVE-2023-36844 Juniper Junos OS EX Series PHP External Variable Modification
Sources
Also known as GHSA-hh5w-x284-9q9c.