# CVE-2026-15972: Unauthenticated denial of service via unbounded external gRPC connection acceptance

> Remote attackers can cause denial of service by exhausting resources via unbounded gRPC connections, affecting Consul deployments.

- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 7 Aug 2026
- **Updated:** 10 Aug 2026
- **Also known as:** BIT-consul-2026-15972, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-15972, GHSA-699f-92f5-m297, MINI-5794-jgf3-76ww, MINI-gw4h-v626-gx47, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-15972

## What is CVE-2026-15972?

CVE-2026-15972 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in HashiCorp Consul, published on 7 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

Consul Community Edition and Consul Enterprise 1.13.0 through 2.0.2 are vulnerable to an unauthenticated denial of service through unbounded connection acceptance on the external gRPC listeners. A remote attacker may exhaust agent file descriptors, goroutines, and memory by opening many incomplete connections, potentially preventing legitimate clients from connecting. This vulnerability, CVE-2026-15972, is fixed in Consul 2.0.3 and Consul Enterprise 1.21.17, 1.22.11, and 2.0.3.

Weakness: CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-15972?

1 open source package ship an affected version, including consul.


| Package | Ecosystem | Affected | Fixed in |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `consul` | Bitnami | From 1.13.0 | 2.0.3 |

## How do I fix CVE-2026-15972?

Upgrade consul to 2.0.3 or later.

## Is CVE-2026-15972 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-15972 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-15972 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-15972 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in HashiCorp Consul, published on 7 Aug 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-2026-15972 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected packages and fixed versions:
- consul (Bitnami): affected from 1.13.0; fixed in 2.0.3

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-2026-15972/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-15972/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-15972
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-15972
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-15972

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-15972/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.