Description
charon/sa/ike_sa.c in the charon daemon in strongSWAN before 4.3.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and crash) via an invalid IKE_SA_INIT request that triggers "an incomplete state," followed by a CREATE_CHILD_SA request.
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Debian
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 14 | strongswan | 4.2.14-1.1 | — |
| Debian 13 | strongswan | 4.2.14-1.1 | — |
| Debian 12 | strongswan | 4.2.14-1.1 | — |
| Debian 5.0 | strongswan | 4.2.4-5+lenny3 | DSA-1899-1 |
| Debian 4.0 | strongswan | 2.8.0+dfsg-1+etch2 | DSA-1899-1 |
Advisories 1
- DSA-1899-1 strongswan - denial of service Debian Security (DSA / DLA) · Mar 9, 2026
References
- 35296 third-party-advisory
- http://download.strongswan.org/patches/03_invalid_ike_state_patch/strongswan-4.x.x_invalid_ike_state.patch
- 36922 third-party-advisory
- [strongSwan] 20090527 [strongSwan] ANNOUNCE: strongSwan 4.3.1 and 4.2.15 released mailing-list
- DSA-1899 vendor-advisory
- 35178 vdb-entry
- 35685 third-party-advisory
- SUSE-SR:2009:012 vendor-advisory
- http://download.strongswan.org/CHANGES4.txt
- http://download.strongswan.org/patches/03_invalid_ike_state_patch/strongswan-4.x.x_invalid_ike_state.readme