The vulnerability is a heap-based buffer overflow in the sharkd utility of Wireshark versions 4.6.0–4.6.8 and 4.4.0–4.4.18 that causes the utility to crash, leading to a denial‑of‑service condition. The bug arises when unexpected input is processed by sharkd, consuming more heap memory than allocated and terminating the tool. This weakness is identified as CWE‑122 and CWE‑787, but the available evidence indicates it does not provide remote code execution or data exfiltration capabilities.

Wireshark Foundation's Wireshark product is affected for versions 4.6.0 through 4.6.8 and 4.4.0 through 4.4.18. The vendor recommends upgrading to version 4.6.9 or newer to eliminate the flaw.

The CVSS score of 5.5 rates the issue as moderate severity, and the EPSS score of less than 1% indicates a very low likelihood of exploitation. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. The likely attack vector is local or requires the attacker to supply malicious input that causes the utility to fail, as the crash is triggered by the sharkd component. Accordingly, while the flaw can halt Wireshark operations, the practical risk is limited but should not be ignored.