Loading story…
The Wireshark Foundation released Wireshark 4.6.4, a maintenance update that patches multiple security flaws in protocol dissectors that could be triggered by malformed or edge-case traffic to cause denial-of-service conditions (e.g., crashes, infinite loops, or resource exhaustion) during packet analysis. Reported fixes include issues leading to memory exhaustion in the USB HID dissector and crash conditions affecting dissectors such as NTS-KE and RF4CE, reducing the risk that crafted captures or live traffic could disrupt analyst workflows or automated inspection pipelines.
Wireshark 4.6.4 also addresses additional dissector stability problems, including a crash in the HTTP3 dissector and an infinite loop in the MEGACO dissector, and it resolves a plugin compatibility regression introduced by an API/ABI change in 4.6.1 that impacted plugins built for 4.6.0. Beyond security-related fixes, the release includes stability and performance improvements (including an “Expert Info” performance issue and various capture-file and toolchain fixes affecting utilities like TShark and editcap), supporting more reliable operation in enterprise monitoring, incident response, and malware analysis environments.
See real exploitation activity before you spend the cycle.
2 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
The Wireshark Foundation released Wireshark 4.6.4 as a maintenance update fixing multiple dissector vulnerabilities and functional bugs. Reported fixes include crash, infinite loop, and memory-exhaustion issues in protocol dissectors, along with performance and stability improvements such as resolving plugin compatibility problems and other parser-related defects.
An API/ABI change in Wireshark 4.6.1 caused compatibility problems for plugins built for Wireshark 4.6.0, disrupting expected extension interoperability in the 4.6 stable series. This issue was later addressed in Wireshark 4.6.4.
Vulnerabilities, threat actors, malware, products, organizations, and breaches Mallory has linked to this story.
See real exploitation activity behind this advisory so you can triage it against everything else in the queue.
2 references tracked. Mallory keeps watching after this page renders.
Map indicators from this story to your assets and identify affected systems in minutes.
Every observed campaign, victim, and pivot linked to actors named in this story.
Malware, exploits, and IOCs connected to the activity described here.
YARA, Sigma, and Snort rules deployed to your SIEM as soon as they’re published.
Get matching new stories delivered to your team as they break — not the next morning.
Ask questions about this story and take action on the answers.
Other stories Mallory is tracking that overlap on entities, sources, or topic labels.
The Wireshark Foundation released **Wireshark 4.6.8** to fix **28 security vulnerabilities** that can crash the protocol analyzer during packet analysis, with issues tracked as `wnpa-sec-2026-64` through `wnpa-sec-2026-91`. The flaws affect multiple protocol dissectors, `sharkd`, the reassembly engine, and numerous capture-file parsers, and several can be triggered simply by opening **crafted saved capture files** rather than processing live traffic. One advisory affecting the **X.509IF dissector** (`wnpa-sec-2026-87`) is still awaiting a CVE identifier. The update also addresses additional memory-safety and stability problems outside the numbered advisory set, including a **stack buffer overflow** in the **K12/RF5 writer**, an **out-of-bounds read** in the **BLF writer**, a **NULL-pointer dereference** in **KNXIP Secure Wrapper** decryption, and **stack exhaustion** in the **NetLog JSON parser**. Wireshark 4.6.8 further corrects eight non-crashing **5G decoding errors** that displayed incorrect values, alongside operational fixes such as extcap path handling on UNIX-like systems and stability improvements on Windows, underscoring that offline packet-capture handling remains a meaningful attack surface for defenders and analysts.
Aug 21, 2026
Wireshark released version **4.6.8** with fixes for a large set of security vulnerabilities spanning packet dissectors, codecs, parsers, and related utilities. The advisory tracks issues under `wnpa-sec-2026-08` through `wnpa-sec-2026-50` and describes widespread crash conditions, infinite loops that can trigger denial of service, and several flaws marked as possible code execution, including issues in the **TLS** dissector, **RDP** dissector, **SBC** codec, and profile import functionality. Affected components also include handlers for protocols such as **SMB2**, **HTTP**, **WebSocket**, **ZigBee**, **MySQL**, **ICMPv6**, and **OpenFlow**, highlighting risk across Wireshark’s packet parsing and decompression surface. Supporting issue reports show specific parser weaknesses such as a **BT-DHT dissector stack overflow via nested structs** and an **FC-SWILS dissector stack overflow via nested zone set objects**, while CVE tracking includes identifiers such as `CVE-2026-5408` and `CVE-2026-5409`. The release notes also reference additional non-CVE defects involving memory corruption, integer underflow, heap overflow, parser overflows, and stability problems in **Sharkd**, underscoring that malformed capture data or imported content could crash analysis workflows and, in some cases, potentially lead to code execution.
Aug 21, 2026
Wireshark released version **4.6.5** to remediate more than 40 vulnerabilities, including multiple flaws that could allow **arbitrary code execution** when the tool processes malformed network packets or malicious capture and profile files. The most severe issues were reported in the **TLS dissector**, **SBC codec**, **RDP dissector**, and **profile import** functionality, where crashes may be exploitable for code execution. The release also fixes a broad set of **denial-of-service** bugs across numerous protocol dissectors, several **infinite-loop** conditions that can stall unattended analysis workflows, and decompression-related crashes in **zlib** and **LZ77** handling. Because Wireshark is widely deployed in enterprise security operations, packet analysis, and SIEM-connected environments—sometimes with elevated privileges—the patched version is being treated as a high-priority security update.
Jun 29, 2026