WiresharkApplication
CVE-2016-4421
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 · uneditedepan/dissectors/packet-ber.c in the ASN.1 BER dissector in Wireshark 1.12.x before 1.12.10 and 2.x before 2.0.2 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (deep recursion, stack consumption, and application crash) via a packet that specifies deeply nested data.
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 · high confidenceThe BER (Basic Encoding Rules) dissector in Wireshark (packet-ber.c) lacks proper recursion depth limits when parsing ASN.1 encoded data. When processing packets with deeply nested structures, the dissector recurses excessively, consuming stack space until the application crashes.
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
WiresharkApplication
= 1.12.0= 1.12.1= 1.12.2= 1.12.3= 1.12.4= 1.12.5= 1.12.6= 1.12.7= 1.12.8= 1.12.9= 2.0.0= 2.0.1CVSS 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
- High
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
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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Verify Wireshark is installedRun 'wireshark --version' or 'tshark --version' on the systemAffected if Command returns version information, indicating Wireshark is present
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Identify the installed Wireshark versionParse the version number from the output of 'wireshark --version' or 'tshark --version'Affected if Version output shows a number that must then be compared to the affected range
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Compare version against affected rangeCheck if the installed version is 1.12.0 through 1.12.9, or 2.0.0 or 2.0.1Affected if Installed version falls within 1.12.0-1.12.9 or is 2.0.0-2.0.1
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Confirm the BER dissector is presentThe BER dissector (packet-ber.c) is compiled into Wireshark by default; verify by checking that Wireshark opens without errorsAffected if Wireshark runs normally, meaning the BER dissector code is loaded
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Assess exposure to malicious capturesDetermine if the user opens packet capture files from untrusted sources that may contain ASN.1 BER encoded dataAffected if User opens capture files from unknown or untrusted sources using an affected Wireshark version
If Wireshark version 1.12.0-1.12.9 or 2.0.0-2.0.1 is installed and the user processes packet capture files, the environment is potentially affected by this stack exhaustion vulnerability in the BER dissector.
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 dataUpgrade Wireshark to version 1.12.10 or 2.0.2 or later to obtain the patch that adds recursion limits; avoid opening untrusted packet capture files from unknown sources.
Fix this in Wireshark
Scoped from the published advisory
- Consultation2.0 h
- Implementation3.0 h
- Testing3.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $2,800.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2016-4421 — 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-2016-4421 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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- 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
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