CVE-2026-21919 Race condition in Junos OS
A race condition in Junos OS management daemon allows attackers to cause a denial of service by rapidly connecting and disconnecting NETCONF sessions.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-21919?
CVE-2026-21919 is a high-severity vulnerability in Juniper Junos, published on 9 Apr 2026. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
An Incorrect Synchronization vulnerability in the management daemon (mgd) of Juniper Networks Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved allows a network-based attacker with low privileges to cause a complete Denial-of-Service (DoS) of the management plane.
When NETCONF sessions are quickly established and disconnected, a locking issue causes mgd processes to hang in an unusable state. When the maximum number of mgd processes has been reached, no new logins are possible. This leads to the inability to manage the device and requires a power-cycle to recover.
This issue can be monitored by checking for mgd processes in lockf state in the output of 'show system processes extensive':
user@host> show system processes extensive | match mgd <pid> root 20 0 501M 4640K lockf 1 0:01 0.00% mgd
If the system still can be accessed (either via the CLI or as root, which might still be possible as last resort as this won't invoke mgd), mgd processes in this state can be killed with 'request system process terminate <PID>' from the CLI or with 'kill -9 <PID>' from the shell.
This issue affects:
Junos OS:
* 23.4 versions before 23.4R2-S4, * 24.2 versions before 24.2R2-S1, * 24.4 versions before 24.4R1-S3, 24.4R2;
This issue does not affect Junos OS versions before 23.4R1;
Junos OS Evolved:
* 23.4 versions before 23.4R2-S5-EVO, * 24.2 versions before 24.2R2-S1-EVO, * 24.4 versions before 24.4R1-S3-EVO, 24.4R2-EVO.
This issue does not affect Junos OS Evolved versions before 23.4R1-EVO;
Weakness: CWE-821
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-21919?
It affects 2 products.
Products include Juniper Junos, Juniper Junos Os Evolved.
How do I fix CVE-2026-21919?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-21919 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Is CVE-2026-21919 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-21919 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Juniper Junos
- CVE-2023-36845 Juniper Junos OS EX Series and SRX Series PHP External Variable Modification
- CVE-2020-1631 Juniper Junos OS Path Traversal
- CVE-2025-21590 Juniper Junos OS Improper Isolation or Compartmentalization
- CVE-2023-36851 Juniper Junos OS SRX Series Missing Authentication for Critical Function
- CVE-2023-36844 Juniper Junos OS EX Series PHP External Variable Modification
Sources
Also known as GHSA-qv89-vxpv-h7vc.