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CVE-2026-53994

Is CVE-2026-53994 real, exploitable, or a false positive? Here's the community verdict.

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signals

public sources

Exploited in wild
Not listed
CISA KEV
Public exploit
None known
Metasploit/EDB/PoC
Base severity
7.5 High
CVSS
Exploitation prob.
0.4%
FIRST EPSS
Weakness
CWE-122
CWE

High CVSS base score, but low real-world exploitation probability (EPSS). Likely less urgent than the score implies.

baseline read

auto · not a community verdict

Real, but low real-world risk

A genuine vulnerability on paper, but EPSS shows little real-world exploitation — the base score may overstate urgency. This is not the same as a false positive.

Based on CVSS · FIRST EPSS

Confirm or dispute →

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

ProFTPD mod_sftp contains a heap-based buffer overflow reachable by an authenticated SFTP user. The fxp_packet_read() function accepts the attacker-supplied 32-bit big-endian SFTP packet length without a minimum sanity check. A value of 0 causes an unsigned subtraction elsewhere in the read path to underflow to approximately 4 GB. That oversized request reaches the core memory allocator, where the rounded size is computed in size_t but passed to new_block() as a 32-bit int; the low 32 bits of 0x100000000 are 0, so new_block() returns a small (~512-byte) block while the caller is told it received ~4 GB. The subsequent fill loop then streams attacker-controlled bytes past the end of the 544-byte allocation, producing an attacker-controlled heap buffer overflow. An authenticated user can crash the per-connection ProFTPD session child on demand with a single malformed SFTP packet (packet_len=0 followed by a body greater than approximately 544 bytes), producing reliable authenticated remote denial of service. Depending on heap layout and adjacent allocations, heap metadata corruption and further consequences beyond denial of service may be possible, though only denial of service is demonstrated by the supplied proof of concept.

References

NVD MITRE CVE.org

Published

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In your experience, is this finding real and exploitable?

awaiting field verdicts
Real, but not a risk here
Not a real issue

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Field notes & remediation

Verdicts are the quick signal. Notes are the evidence and fixes behind them.

  • 0
    Field note · TruePositive EditorialCurated

    This scores high on paper (CVSS 7.5) but the real-world signal is low. It is not in CISA KEV and no public exploit was found, and near-term exploitation looks unlikely (EPSS about 0%). Verify your own exposure before treating it as urgent. Not an emergency for most teams, but patch it in your normal cycle and check whether the affected component is actually exposed in your setup.

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Related CVEs

Same weakness: CWE-122.