CVE-2015-3958
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedHospira LifeCare PCA Infusion System 5.0 and earlier, and possibly other versions, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (forced manual reboot) via a flood of TCP packets.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · moderate confidenceThe Hospira LifeCare PCA Infusion System 5.0 and earlier contains a vulnerability where a remote attacker can cause denial of service by flooding the device with TCP packets, forcing a manual reboot. This is a classic resource exhaustion attack against a networked medical device that lacks sufficient rate limiting or traffic filtering protections.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data<= 5.0CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Authentication
- None
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- Complete
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Identify Hospira LifeCare PCA Infusion Systems on your networkReview your asset inventory or scan network ranges for devices with Hospira LifeCare PCA hostname, or physically inspect infusion pump devices for the LifeCare PCA model labelAffected if Any Hospira LifeCare PCA Infusion System device is present on your network
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Check the firmware version of the deviceAccess the device management interface or check the device display menu for firmware version information; compare against version 5.0Affected if The device firmware version is 5.0 or lower (including all prior versions)
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Verify the device has network connectivityCheck if the device has been assigned an IP address and is actively listening on network ports; review network scans showing TCP services on the deviceAffected if The device is network-addressable and accessible via TCP
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Confirm the device is directly exposed to untrusted networksReview firewall rules and network boundary configurations to determine if the device can receive inbound TCP traffic from networks outside its immediate clinical network segmentAffected if The device can receive inbound TCP connections from non-clinical network segments without firewall protection
You are affected if you have any Hospira LifeCare PCA Infusion System devices running firmware version 5.0 or earlier that are network-accessible, as the lack of rate limiting makes them vulnerable to TCP flood-based denial of service attacks.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataIsolate the infusion system on a dedicated network segment with firewalls and intrusion detection/prevention systems. Implement rate limiting and traffic filtering at the network perimeter to block malicious TCP floods targeting medical devices.
- Consultation6.0 h
- Implementation12.0 h
- Testing6.0 h
- Review / QA4.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $7,968.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2015-3958 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2015-3958 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data