CVE-2026-44036 Uncontrolled recursion in DCMTK xml2dcm allows denial of service
An attacker can cause a denial of service via stack exhaustion by providing a crafted XML file to the DCMTK xml2dcm converter.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-44036?
CVE-2026-44036 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in OFFIS DCMTK, published on 8 Oct 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Official description
Uncontrolled mutual recursion between DcmXMLParseHelper::parseDataSet() and DcmXMLParseHelper::parseSequence() in the XML-to-DICOM converter (dcmdata/libdcxml/xml2dcm.cc) of OFFIS DCMTK 3.7.0 allows an attacker to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion and process crash) via a crafted XML file with deeply nested sequence and item elements. The xml2dcm tool and any service that converts untrusted XML to DICOM with this code are affected. The issue is fixed in commit 87f256d73e30656a822bf7d76d1cf1d9bb693954.
Weakness: CWE-674
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-44036?
How do I fix CVE-2026-44036?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-44036 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-2026-44036 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-44036 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2026-44036, GHSA-hch2-45m4-65gq, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-44036.