D-Bus Daemon DoS via Driver Broadcast Delivery Failure
CVE-2026-120749 Published on November 6, 2026
Dbus: dbus-daemon: dbus-daemon aborts (reply_serial != 0) when a broadcast from the driver cannot be delivered to a monitored bus
A flaw was found in D-Bus. With a privileged Monitoring client attached (for example dbus-monitor or busctl monitor), an unprivileged local user can cause dbus-daemon to abort if a driver-originated broadcast such as NameOwnerChanged or ActivatableServicesChanged cannot be delivered to a recipient (for example due to a deny rule or an exceeded outgoing message queue). Driver broadcasts still use serial 0; when delivery fails, composing the monitor error reply asserts reply_serial != 0 and aborts the daemon. This is an incomplete fix for CVE-2023-34969, which only assigned serials for driver messages sent to a single recipient. On the well-known system bus this is a denial of service.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-120749 can be exploited with local system access, and does not require authorization privileges or user interaction. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have no impact on confidentiality and integrity, and a high impact on availability.
Timeline
Reported to Red Hat.
Made public.
Weakness Type
What is an assertion failure Vulnerability?
The product contains an assert() or similar statement that can be triggered by an attacker, which leads to an application exit or other behavior that is more severe than necessary.
CVE-2026-120749 has been classified to as an assertion failure vulnerability or weakness.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-120749
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