Executive brief
PcapPlusPlus, a library used for capturing and analyzing network traffic, contains a memory handling flaw in its TLS (encryption) processing component. An attacker could send specially crafted, truncated network packets to trigger a memory error. This could potentially lead to service instability or unauthorized access to small amounts of memory during packet inspection.
Technical details
A heap-based buffer overflow (CWE-122) exists in PcapPlusPlus 25.05 within the TLS Hello Handler component. The vulnerability is located in the `pcpp::SSLClientHelloMessage::getHandshakeVersion` function in `Packet++/src/SSLHandshake.cpp`. The root cause is a failure to validate that the packet data is large enough to contain the full TLS Client Hello header before accessing the `handshakeVersion` field. An attacker can exploit this by sending truncated or malformed TLS packets, leading to an out-of-bounds read/overflow. While the attack can be launched remotely, it is considered high complexity due to the specific packet structures required. A patch has been released in commit 98e671010bc7c87b95898c22ae289220ae92542b.
Affected products
- seladb PcapPlusPlus 25.05
Timeline
- 2026-06-09: disclosed: Issue reported on GitHub
- 2026-06-24: patched: Fix merged into dev branch
- 2026-06-29: advisory: CVE published
References
- https://github.com/seladb/PcapPlusPlus/
- https://github.com/seladb/PcapPlusPlus/commit/98e671010bc7c87b95898c22ae289220ae92542b
- https://github.com/seladb/PcapPlusPlus/issues/2151
- https://github.com/seladb/PcapPlusPlus/pull/2161
- https://github.com/user-attachments/files/28213479/poc.zip
- https://vuldb.com/cve/CVE-2026-13588
- https://vuldb.com/submit/844481