# CVE-2026-20179: Multiple Cisco Products Snort 3 Generic Routing Encapsulation Denial of Service Vulnerabilities


- **Severity:** Medium 5.8 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:L`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 21 Oct 2026
- **Updated:** 22 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** GHSA-9v2c-x8g8-r7m4

## What is CVE-2026-20179?

CVE-2026-20179 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Cisco Open Source Snort3, published on 21 Oct 2026. 

### Official description

Multiple Cisco products are affected by a vulnerability in the Snort 3 Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) Detection Engine that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the Snort 3 Detection Engine to restart, resulting in an interruption of packet inspection.

This vulnerability is due to incomplete error checking when Snort 3 parses GRE packets. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted GRE packet to a targeted device to be parsed by Snort. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the Snort 3 Detection Engine to restart unexpectedly, resulting in a DoS condition.

Weakness: CWE-128 (Wrap-around Error)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-20179?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-20179?

No fix has been published for CVE-2026-20179 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2026-20179 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-20179 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-20179 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-20179 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Cisco Open Source Snort3, published on 21 Oct 2026. 
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-20179 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Cisco Open Source Snort3. 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-2026-20179/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20179/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-20179
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-20179
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-20179

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-20179/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.