CVE-2024-2357: IKEv2 misconfiguration can cause libreswan to abort and restart

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-03-11 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

The Libreswan Project was notified of an issue causing libreswan to restart under some IKEv2 retransmit scenarios when a connection is configured to use PreSharedKeys (authby=secret) and the connection cannot find a matching configured secret. When such a connection is automatically added on startup using the auto= keyword, it can cause repeated crashes leading to a Denial of Service.

Affected products

The Libreswan Project libreswan: from 4.2 through 4.12

References

https://libreswan.org/security/CVE-2024-2357
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/EJZJYFHKBIJ4ZK5GAWWFFR3AKJS6O5JX/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/HEM46ALKF7NG6CAUKZ7KQERVOHWQIQKY/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TVQ7MZY6LFFGRWAJNTKKN2VSEFS2VPAR/
https://libreswan.org/security/CVE-2024-2357
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/EJZJYFHKBIJ4ZK5GAWWFFR3AKJS6O5JX/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/HEM46ALKF7NG6CAUKZ7KQERVOHWQIQKY/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TVQ7MZY6LFFGRWAJNTKKN2VSEFS2VPAR/

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