Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2026-73199: Red Hat FreeIPA ipa-enrollment null pointer dereference in LDAP

CVE-2026-73199 · Severity: medium · CVSS 6.5 · Published 2026-08-20

Vendors: Red Hat.

Executive brief

FreeIPA is an open-source identity management system used by enterprises to manage user accounts, authentication, and authorization across their infrastructure. A flaw in its LDAP enrollment plugin allows an authenticated attacker to crash the directory service by sending a malformed request, causing a denial of service that disrupts identity management operations for all connected systems.

Technical details

A null pointer dereference vulnerability exists in the ipa-enrollment SLAPI plugin that handles LDAP extended operations for host enrollment. An authenticated remote attacker can trigger the crash by omitting the request value for the JOIN_OID parameter in an ipa-enrollment extended operation, causing the server process to crash. The attack requires network-level LDAP access and prior authentication to the directory service. The vulnerability allows only denial of service (application crash); no code execution, data disclosure, or data modification is possible. Patches from Red Hat address this issue in updated FreeIPA packages.

Affected products

  • Red Hat FreeIPA <UNKNOWN>

Timeline

  • 2026-08-20: disclosed

References