CVE-2026-44031 Uncontrolled recursion in the DCMTK DICOM dataset parser allows unauthenticated remote denial of service
Remote unauthenticated attackers can crash DCMTK-based DICOM services by sending deeply nested sequences, causing stack exhaustion.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-44031?
CVE-2026-44031 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in OFFIS DCMTK, published on 8 Oct 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Uncontrolled recursion in DcmSequenceOfItems::read() and DcmItem::read() in the dcmdata library of OFFIS DCMTK 3.7.0 allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion and process crash) via a DICOM dataset containing deeply nested sequences (SQ elements). The dataset can be sent in a C-STORE request to storescp, dcmrecv, dcmqrscp, or any other DICOM service built on DCMTK, because the received dataset is parsed before any authentication takes place. Local tools such as dcmdump also crash when opening such a file. The issue is fixed in commit 885ff0f10372bd589b5f44cea974f28a3964cb0f, which adds a configurable sequence nesting depth limit (default 64).
Weakness: CWE-674
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-44031?
How do I fix CVE-2026-44031?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-44031 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-44031 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-44031 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2026-44031, GHSA-hxvw-37gr-vg44, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-44031.