All vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-44031

Uncontrolled recursion in the DCMTK DICOM dataset parser allows unauthenticated remote denial of service

OFFIS DCMTK
Open in ThreatlineRecord JSON
CVSS
8.7High
ExploitationNo known exploitationNot in CISA KEV, which does not prove it is unexploitedCISA KEV
Exploit odds (EPSS)0.39%Chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days, higher than 32% of CVEs. Scored 23 Oct 2026FIRST EPSS
Fixed inNone listedNo source names a fixed version. Check the vendor advisory below
Published8 Oct 2026Updated 8 Oct 2026CVE List

What fixes it

No source in this snapshot names a fixed version. The vendor advisories under References are the place to check.

Description

Uncontrolled recursion in DcmSequenceOfItems::read() and DcmItem::read() in the dcmdata library of OFFIS DCMTK 3.7.0 allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion and process crash) via a DICOM dataset containing deeply nested sequences (SQ elements). The dataset can be sent in a C-STORE request to storescp, dcmrecv, dcmqrscp, or any other DICOM service built on DCMTK, because the received dataset is parsed before any authentication takes place. Local tools such as dcmdump also crash when opening such a file. The issue is fixed in commit 885ff0f10372bd589b5f44cea974f28a3964cb0f, which adds a configurable sequence nesting depth limit (default 64).

Text from CVE List

Affected versions 1

  • DCMTKaffected: 3.7.0CVE List

References 2