CVE-2024-39557: Junos OS Evolved: MAC table changes cause a memory leak

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-07-10 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

An Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in the Layer 2 Address Learning Daemon (l2ald) of Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved allows an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause a memory leak, eventually exhausting all system memory, leading to a system crash and Denial of Service (DoS). Certain MAC table updates cause a small amount of memory to leak. Once memory utilization reaches its limit, the issue will result in a system crash and restart. To identify the issue, execute the CLI command: user@device> show platform application-info allocations app l2ald-agent EVL Object Allocation Statistics: Node Application Context Name Live Allocs Fails Guids re0 l2ald-agent net::juniper::rtnh::L2Rtinfo 1069096 1069302 0 1069302 re0 l2ald-agent net::juniper::rtnh::NHOpaqueTlv 114 195 0 195 This issue affects Junos OS Evolved: * All versions before 21.4R3-S8-EVO, * from 22.2-EVO before 22.2R3-S4-EVO, * from 22.3-EVO before 22.3R3-S3-EVO, * from 22.4-EVO before 22.4R3-EVO, * from 23.2-EVO before 23.2R2-EVO.

Affected products

Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved: before 21.4; 21.4, 21.4-r1, 21.4-r1-s1, 21.4-r1-s2, 21.4-r2, 21.4-r2-s1 (+41) — fixed in 21.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Juniper Networks Junos OS Evolved 21.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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