The vulnerability is a heap‑based buffer overflow in the SCTP protocol dissector of Wireshark versions 4.6.0 through 4.6.8 and 4.4.0 through 4.4.18. This flaw leads to a crash that effectively results in a denial of service. The affected code violates proper bounds checking when allocating and copying data from SCTP packets, a vulnerability classified as CWE‑122.

Affected systems are the Wireshark packet‑analysis application distributed by the Wireshark Foundation. Vulnerable releases include Wireshark 4.6.0‑4.6.8 and Wireshark 4.4.0‑4.4.18. No other vendor or product variants are listed.

The CVSS score of 8.1 indicates high severity, and the EPSS score of less than 1 % suggests that, as of the data snapshot, the probability of exploitation is low. The vulnerability is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog, implying no widespread exploitation has been reported. Based on the description, it is inferred that attackers could trigger the overflow by sending specially crafted SCTP packets that Wireshark processes; if Wireshark is running with elevated privileges or on a critical monitoring system, the crash could interrupt or disable network surveillance. Because the flaw is limited to the SCTP dissector, the attack requires the target to parse SCTP traffic, either by capturing inbound packets or replaying them locally.