CVE-2024-21599

Junos OS: MX Series: MPC3E memory leak with PTP configuration

State: Published
Severity: 6.5 Medium
Published: Jan 12, 2024
Updated: Jun 16, 2025
Reserved: Dec 27, 2023

Description

A Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime vulnerability in the Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE) of Juniper Networks Junos OS on MX Series allows an adjacent, unauthenticated attacker to cause a Denial of Service (DoS).

If an MX Series device receives PTP packets on an MPC3E that doesn't support PTP this causes a memory leak which will result in unpredictable behavior and ultimately in an MPC crash and restart.

To monitor for this issue, please use the following FPC vty level commands:

show heap shows an increase in "LAN buffer" utilization and

show clksync ptp nbr-upd-info shows non-zero "Pending PFEs" counter.

This issue affects Juniper Networks Junos OS on MX Series with MPC3E:

* All versions earlier than 20.4R3-S3; * 21.1 versions earlier than 21.1R3-S4; * 21.2 versions earlier than 21.2R3; * 21.3 versions earlier than 21.3R2-S1, 21.3R3; * 21.4 versions earlier than 21.4R2; * 22.1 versions earlier than 22.1R2.

Scores

CVSS	Score	Vector	Source
3.1	6.5 Medium	CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H	juniper

Weaknesses

CWE-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

Affected Products

Product	Versions
Junos OSJuniper Networks	before 20.4R3-S3Affected 21.1 to before 21.1R3-S4Affected 21.2 to before 21.2R3Affected 21.3 to before 21.3R2-S1, 21.3R3Affected 21.4 to before 21.4R2Affected 22.1 to before 22.1R2Affected

References

https://supportportal.juniper.net/JSA75740vendor-advisory
https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/4.0#CVSS:4.0/AV:A/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:Ltechnical-description

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