OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to remote denial-of-service due to memory exhaustion caused by memory leaks a

Affected versions

NVD version ranges (for catalog products). Add the product to your stack with a version and matching uses these.

• openvpn openvpnup to 2.3.16 inclusive
• openvpn openvpn2.4.0
• openvpn openvpn2.4.1
• openvpn openvpn2.4.2

Versions reported by the vendor

Affected version ranges reported by the assigning authority (redhat). Independent of NVD's CPE analysis and usually ahead of it.

• OpenVPN Technologies, Inc OpenVPN

  • before 2.4.3, before 2.3.17affected

Package-level exposure

OSV and GitHub Advisory data: ecosystem, package and range. SBOM matching uses this table.

Other highest-scoring records for the same primary product.

• CVE-2024-27903OpenVPN plug-ins on Windows with OpenVPN 2.6.9 and earlier could be loaded from any directory, which allows an attacker to load an arbitrary
  42Plan
• CVE-2023-46850Use after free in OpenVPN version 2.6.0 to 2.6.6 may lead to undefined behavoir, leaking memory buffers or remote execution when sending net
  40Plan
• CVE-2022-0547OpenVPN 2.1 until v2.4.12 and v2.5.6 may enable authentication bypass in external authentication plug-ins when more than one of them makes u
  40Plan
• CVE-2017-12166OpenVPN versions before 2.3.3 and 2.4.x before 2.4.4 are vulnerable to a buffer overflow vulnerability when key-method 1 is used, possibly r
  40Plan
• CVE-2025-10680OpenVPN 2.7_alpha1 through 2.7_beta1 on POSIX based platforms allows a remote authenticated server to inject shell commands via DNS variable
  37Monitor
• CVE-2018-7544A cross-protocol scripting issue was discovered in the management interface in OpenVPN through 2.4.5.
  37Monitor

FIRST EPSS daily score; only changes of 0.01 or more are recorded (step chart).

Root cause

Code that parses nested structures sets no depth or size limit. A small input can turn into a disproportionate processing load.

A representative example of this vulnerability class. Not the vendor's source code; it shows the faulty pattern and its fix.

1function expand(node) {2  return node.children.map(expand);3}

1const MAX_DEPTH = 32;2function expand(node, depth = 0) {3  if (depth > MAX_DEPTH) throw new Error("too deep");4  return node.children.map((c) => expand(c, depth + 1));5}

Attack context

MITRE CAPEC attack patterns and ATT&CK techniques for this weakness class (CWE). A starting point for detection rules and threat hunting.