The vulnerability is an infinite loop introduced in the GNW protocol dissector of Wireshark. This loop has the effect of consuming CPU resources and eventually causing the application to hang, resulting in a denial of service to the user or the system the software runs on. The weakness is classified as CWE-835, which refers to an infinite loop that does not terminate.

Wireshark, released by Wireshark Foundation. Versions affected are 4.6.0 through 4.6.4 and 4.4.0 through 4.4.14, which are all prior to the patch that was released in 4.6.5.

The CVSS score of 5.5 indicates a medium severity flaw. EPSS data is not available, and the vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. The likely attack vector is local – an attacker can supply a crafted capture file or network traffic that forces Wireshark’s GNW dissector into the infinite loop. Once triggered, the loop will drain CPU resources and stall the application, denying service to the running user. Because the exploit requires the victim to run Wireshark with the malicious data, the risk is confined to the local environment, but the impact can bring down the application for the user while Wireshark is in use.