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Uncontrolled Resource ConsumptionWeakness · CWE-400

CVE-2024-38520

MEDIUM · 5.3 CVSS v3.1 Published 2024-06-26
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
62/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

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 · unedited
SoftEtherVPN is a an open-source cross-platform multi-protocol VPN Program. When SoftEtherVPN is deployed with L2TP enabled on a device, it introduces the possibility of the host being used for amplification/reflection traffic generation because it will respond to every packet with two response packets that are larger than the request packet size. These sorts of techniques are used by external actors who generate spoofed source IPs to target a destination on the internet. This vulnerability has been patched in version 5.02.5185.

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
How this class of weakness works · CWE-400

A single request can consume unbounded CPU, memory, or connections, so a modest amount of malicious traffic exhausts the service. The result is denial of service for everyone else. Remediation is enforcing limits, quotas, and timeouts on what any one request can use.

General guidance for the uncontrolled resource consumption 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
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

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 · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

5.02.5185

  1. 1. Identify the currently installed SoftEtherVPN version on the affected device
  2. 2. Download SoftEtherVPN version 5.02.5185 or later from the official repository at https://www.softether-download.com/
  3. 3. Stop the SoftEtherVPN service before upgrading
  4. 4. Upgrade to version 5.02.5185 using the appropriate installation method for your platform
  5. 5. Start the SoftEtherVPN service after upgrade completes
  6. 6. Verify the L2TP functionality is working correctly after the upgrade

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2024-38520 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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What belongs here
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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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