CVE-2026-12996 Use after free in OpenVPN

What is CVE-2026-12996?

CVE-2026-12996 is a medium-severity use after free vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 30 Jul 2026. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A use-after-free in OpenVPN 2.6.0 through 2.6.20 and 2.7_alpha1 through 2.7.4 allows remote authenticated peers to potentially cause a denial of service or leak memory via crafted packets during TLS session promotion or expiry

Weakness: CWE-416, CWE-125

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-12996?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Openvpn Openvpn.

How do I fix CVE-2026-12996?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.

Is CVE-2026-12996 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-12996 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as ALPINE-CVE-2026-12996, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-12996, GHSA-7226-c5q3-mc6p, OESA-2026-3783, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-12996.