# CVE-2026-102081: Denial of service in Junos OS

> An unauthenticated attacker can cause a memory leak and subsequent denial of service on Juniper SRX and MX devices by generating high session churn when specific application services are enabled.

- **Severity:** High 8.7 (`CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:L/AU:Y/R:U/RE:M`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 14 Oct 2026
- **Updated:** 14 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** GHSA-qf46-hrxr-5282

## What is CVE-2026-102081?

CVE-2026-102081 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Juniper Networks Junos OS, published on 14 Oct 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime vulnerability in the packet forwarding engine (PFE) of Juniper Networks Junos OS on SRX Series allows an unauthenticated, network-based attacker to cause a complete Denial-of-Service (DoS).

On SRX4000 Series, and SRX5000 Series with SPC3, and MX Series with SPC3, when one or more specific application services like ALGs, IDP/DPI, APPID, SECINTEL, AAMW or AppQoE are configured, a high connections per second churn will cause PFE memory to leak. If the memory is exhausted traffic processing will be impacted.

Use the CLI command show security monitoring to monitor the memory utilization of the PFEs on the FPCs.

This issue affects Junos OS on SRX Series and MX Series:

  *  23.4 versions from 23.4R2-S3 before 23.4R2-S7;
  *  24.2 versions from 24.2R2 before 24.2R2-S3;
  *  24.4 versions before 24.4R2-S3;
  *  25.2 versions before 25.2R1-S2, 25.2R2.

Weakness: CWE-401 (Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-102081?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-102081?

No fix has been published for CVE-2026-102081 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2026-102081 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-102081 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-102081 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-102081 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Juniper Networks Junos OS, published on 14 Oct 2026. 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-2026-102081 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Juniper Networks Junos OS. 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-2026-102081/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-102081/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-102081
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-102081
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-102081

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-102081/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.