CVE-2026-54908: Remote Denial of Service via Out-of-Bounds Read in Pion DTLS Handshake Parsing
Vulnerability ID: CVE-2026-54908
CVSS Score: 6.3
Published: 2026-07-31
CVE-2026-54908 is a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability in the Pion DTLS library, where a malformed ServerKeyExchange message triggers an uncaught out-of-bounds slice read panic during handshake unmarshaling, terminating the hosting application process.
TL;DR
An unauthenticated remote attacker can crash any Go application utilizing Pion DTLS prior to v3.1.4 by sending a crafted 2-byte ServerKeyExchange packet during the DTLS handshake using ECDHE_PSK.
⚠️ Exploit Status: POC
Technical Details
- CWE ID: CWE-125 (Out-of-bounds Read)
- Attack Vector: Network
- CVSS Score: 6.3 (Medium)
- Exploit Status: PoC Available
- CISA KEV Status: Not Listed
- Ransomware Use: No
Affected Systems
- Pion DTLS library
-
Pion DTLS: < 3.1.4 (Fixed in:
3.1.4)
Code Analysis
Commit: 49458d6
Fix: message_server_key_exchange: check if len(data) == 0 before access
Exploit Details
- GitHub: Official test assertions showcasing the panic payload in the repository test suite
Mitigation Strategies
- Disable ECDHE_PSK cipher suites in the DTLS configuration if upgrading is delayed
- Deploy container restarts and process monitors to quickly recover from runtime crashes
- Apply network filtering to allow DTLS handshakes only from trusted source IP ranges where possible
Remediation Steps:
- Open the Go module file (go.mod) in the affected repository
- Update the github.com/pion/dtls dependency definition to version v3.1.4
- Execute 'go mod tidy' to synchronize the dependency tree and verify the build succeeds
- Redeploy the updated application to staging and production environments
References
Read the full report for CVE-2026-54908 on our website for more details including interactive diagrams and full exploit analysis.
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