CVE-2025-21594 Junos OS: MX Series: In DS-lite and NAT scenario receipt of crafted IPv6 traffic causes port block

High 8.7 Published Updated

Crafted IPv6 traffic in DS-Lite/NAT scenarios blocks ports, causing denial of service on Juniper MX Series routers.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
Not needed
Attackable
Over the internet
Victim action needed
Not needed
Fix
None listed

What is CVE-2025-21594?

CVE-2025-21594 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Juniper Junos, published on 9 Apr 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

An Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions vulnerability in the pfe (packet forwarding engine) of Juniper Networks Junos OS on MX Series causes a port within a pool to be blocked leading to Denial of Service (DoS).

In a DS-Lite (Dual-Stack Lite) and NAT (Network Address Translation) scenario, when crafted IPv6 traffic is received and prefix-length is set to 56, the ports assigned to the user will not be freed.  Eventually, users cannot establish new connections. Affected FPC/PIC need to be manually restarted to recover. Following is the command to identify the issue: 

    user@host> show services nat source port-block      Host_IP                     External_IP                   Port_Block      Ports_Used/       Block_State/                                                               Range           Ports_Total       Left_Time(s)     2001::                        x.x.x.x                     58880-59391     256/256*1         Active/-       >>>>>>>>port still usedThis issue affects Junos OS on MX Series: 

* from 21.2 before 21.2R3-S8,  * from 21.4 before 21.4R3-S7,  * from 22.1 before 22.1R3-S6,  * from 22.2 before 22.2R3-S4,  * from 22.3 before 22.3R3-S3,  * from 22.4 before 22.4R3-S2,  * from 23.2 before 23.2R2-S1,  * from 23.4 before 23.4R1-S2, 23.4R2.

This issue does not affect versions before 20.2R1.

Weakness: CWE-754

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-21594?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Juniper Junos.

How do I fix CVE-2025-21594?

No fix has been published for CVE-2025-21594 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-2025-21594 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-21594 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Juniper Junos vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-393v-j9q3-p63r.

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