Vulnerability · Published May 21, 2026 · Assigned by freebsd

CVE-2026-39461select(2) file descriptor set overflow causes stack overflow

High 8.8

In plain English

A high-severity stack buffer overflow in FreeBSD from FreeBSD. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 7% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)8.8High
Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 93.3% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

libcasper(3) communicates with helper processes via UNIX domain sockets, and uses the select(2) system call to wait for data to become available. However, it does not verify that its socket descriptor fits within select(2)'s descriptor set size limit of FD_SETSIZE (1024). An attacker able to cause an application using libcasper(3) to allocate large file descriptors, e.g., by opening many descriptors and executing a program which is not careful to close them upon startup, may trigger stack corruption. If the target application runs with setuid root privileges, this could be used to escalate local privileges.

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
FreeBSD FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE – before p914.4-RELEASE – before p514.3-RELEASE – before p14

Weakness: CWE-121 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

References