Unauth DCE/RPC UAF in Cisco Snort 3 Detection Engine Enables DoS
CVE-2026-20026 Published on January 7, 2026

Multiple Cisco Products Snort 3 DCERPC Vulnerabilities
Multiple Cisco products are affected by a vulnerability in the processing of DCE/RPC requests that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause the Snort 3 Detection Engine to leak sensitive information or to restart, resulting in an interruption of packet inspection. This vulnerability is due to an error in buffer handling logic when processing DCE/RPC requests, which can result in a buffer use-after-free read. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a large number of DCE/RPC requests through an established connection that is inspected by Snort 3. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to unexpectedly restart the Snort 3 Detection Engine, which could cause a denial of service (DoS).

NVD

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2026-20026 is exploitable with network 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 small impact on availability.

Attack Vector:
NETWORK
Attack Complexity:
LOW
Privileges Required:
NONE
User Interaction:
NONE
Scope:
CHANGED
Confidentiality Impact:
NONE
Integrity Impact:
NONE
Availability Impact:
LOW

Weakness Type

What is a Double-free Vulnerability?

The product calls free() twice on the same memory address, potentially leading to modification of unexpected memory locations. When a program calls free() twice with the same argument, the program's memory management data structures become corrupted. This corruption can cause the program to crash or, in some circumstances, cause two later calls to malloc() to return the same pointer. If malloc() returns the same value twice and the program later gives the attacker control over the data that is written into this doubly-allocated memory, the program becomes vulnerable to a buffer overflow attack.

CVE-2026-20026 has been classified to as a Double-free vulnerability or weakness.


Affected Versions

Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) Software: Cisco UTD SNORT IPS Engine Software:

Exploit Probability

EPSS
0.13%
Percentile
33.23%

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.