CVE-2024-2397
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 · uneditedDue to a bug in packet data buffers management, the PPP printer in tcpdump can enter an infinite loop when reading a crafted DLT_PPP_SERIAL .pcap savefile. This problem does not affect any tcpdump release, but it affected the git master branch from 2023-06-05 to 2024-03-21.
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 analysisCrafted input drives a loop whose exit condition is never satisfied, hanging the thread and starving the service of the resource it occupies. A single request can be enough to take a worker down. Remediation is bounding iteration counts and validating the conditions that are supposed to terminate the loop.
General guidance for the infinite loop class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →
CVSS 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
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
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.
dbcve · scopedUpdate to the latest tcpdump git master branch (commit after b9811ef5bb1b7d45a90e042f81f3aaf233c8bcb2, post-2024-03-21)
- 1. Identify the current tcpdump git commit by running `git log --oneline -1` in your tcpdump source directory
- 2. Check if your current commit is between 2023-06-05 and 2024-03-21 by examining commit dates or comparing to the vulnerable range
- 3. If affected (running a master branch commit from the vulnerable period), fetch the latest changes: `git fetch origin`
- 4. Update to the latest master branch: `git checkout master && git pull`
- 5. Verify the fix is applied by checking commit b9811ef5bb1b7d45a90e042f81f3aaf233c8bcb2 is in your history: `git log --oneline | grep b9811ef`
- 6. Rebuild tcpdump from source if you compiled it yourself
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2024-2397 — 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-2024-2397 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
Be the first to add a field note for this CVE — a mitigation you’ve verified, a version caveat, or a link to a working fix. Sign in above to contribute.
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