# CVE-2026-57224: Suricata dhcp: unbounded transactions in unidirectional traffic can lead to resource exhaustion

> Attackers can cause resource exhaustion and denial of service in Suricata by sending unidirectional traffic that triggers unbounded transaction growth in DHCP and RDP parsers.

- **Severity:** Medium 6.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:A/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:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 18 Sep 2026
- **Updated:** 18 Sep 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2026-57224, GHSA-m2vc-g65c-ph7m, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-57224

## What is CVE-2026-57224?

CVE-2026-57224 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Oisf Suricata, published on 18 Sep 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

Suricata is a network Intrusion Detection System, Intrusion Prevention System and Network Security Monitoring engine. From 8.0.0 until 8.0.6, the DHCP parser in rust/src/dhcp/dhcp.rs creates stateless transactions without recording their packet direction with AppLayerTxData::for_direction(), so a sensor that observes only one direction cannot mark the unseen direction inspected or free completed transactions. The RDP parser in rust/src/rdp/rdp.rs has the same direction-state defect. The per-flow transaction list can grow without bound and cleanup repeatedly scans it, causing increasing CPU and memory consumption and eventual denial of service. This issue is fixed in version 8.0.6.

Weakness: CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling), CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-57224?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Oisf Suricata.

## How do I fix CVE-2026-57224?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2026-57224 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-57224 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Oisf Suricata

- [CVE-2023-35853](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-35853/): Code injection in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2021-37592](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2021-37592/): Other in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2018-10244](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-10244/): Integer overflow in n/a (critical 9.8)
- [CVE-2026-94083](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-94083/): Memory corruption in Suricata (critical 9.4)
- [CVE-2026-94084](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-94084/): Use after free in Suricata (critical 9.4)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-57224 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-57224 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Oisf Suricata, published on 18 Sep 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-57224 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Oisf Suricata. 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-2026-57224/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-57224/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-57224
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-57224
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-57224

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-57224/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.