CVE-2026-124000nasa-jpl ION-DTN heap-based buffer overflow
CVE-2026-124000 is a heap-based buffer overflow in nasa-jpl ION-DTN, rated medium (6.9 on CVSS 4.0).
Why this priority: Medium severity, with no exploitation signal.
Published · Updated · NVD status: Deferred
What it is
A buffer on the heap overflows and corrupts neighbouring data structures.
How it is reached
An attacker can exploit it over the network, without an account, and nobody has to click anything.
What an attacker gains
The direct impact is limited: partial access to data or a partial outage. In practice, this kind of flaw lets an attacker crash the process, read memory, or in the worst case run code.
Is it being exploited?
There is no public report of exploitation yet. It can be exploited automatically, at scale.
What to do
- Upgrade nasa-jpl ION-DTN to 4.2.1-a.2 or later.
- Until it is patched, keep it off the internet or behind a VPN, allowlist or authenticating proxy.
Description from NVD
NASA JPL ION-DTN 2.1.0 through 4.2.0 contains a heap buffer under-allocation vulnerability in the Asynchronous Message Service daemon (amsd) that allows a rogue or misconfigured peer to trigger an out-of-bounds write by sending crafted Meta-AMS (MAMS) configuration management messages that are processed without cryptographic authentication. Attackers can exploit the insufficient buffer size calculation for the internal state-event object to crash the active Configuration Server thread, causing a denial of service and potentially destabilizing subsequent shared-memory allocations in amsd.
What this means for your architecture.
A CVE names a product. Whether it matters depends on where that product sits in your systems: what reaches it, which trust boundary it guards and what it can reach once compromised. Veriom maps your components, their relationships and your trust boundaries from your code, cloud and delivery evidence, so you can see where a component like this sits. The radar itself does not look at your systems.
Components it touches
- Native code: operating systems, browsers and firmware. The flaw sits wherever native code reads untrusted data.
- Network appliances and media or file parsers. The flaw sits wherever native code reads untrusted data.
Trust boundaries in play
- Internet-facing entry points. No account is needed. Any instance reachable from outside your perimeter, through a load balancer, gateway, VPN or exposed admin port, is in scope.
- Wherever native code reads untrusted data. An attacker who crosses it can crash the process, read memory, or in the worst case run code.
Questions to answer about your own systems
- Where does nasa-jpl ION-DTN run in your systems, and at which version?
- Which of those instances can be reached from the internet or partner networks?
- What can it reach once compromised: which data stores, secrets and services?
Sources
- CVE records and CVSS scores from the NVD CVE API. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.
- Exploitation status from CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.
- Exploit likelihood from FIRST’s Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS), refreshed daily.
- Explanations are written by Veriom from fixed templates over each record’s data, not by a person reviewing each CVE. Descriptions are quoted from the records as published.