CVE-2026-72712
MediumCVSS 6.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk35th percentile - higher than 35% of all known CVEs
Summary
Nmap up to and including version 7.99 contains a denial of service vulnerability that allows remote attackers to crash the application by sending a crafted packet with a zero-length TCP option. The malformed packet forces Packet:parse_options() in nselib/packet.lua to allocate objects in an infinite loop, causing an out-of-memory condition and application crash.
Risk Assessment
A remote attacker can easily crash Nmap, potentially disrupting network scanning and security operations, leading to unavailability of the tool.
Recommendation
Update Nmap to a version newer than 7.99 if a patch is available, or apply mitigations such as filtering suspicious packets.
Original NVD description (English source)
Nmap versions up to and including 7.99 contains a denial of service vulnerability that allows remote attackers to crash the application by sending a crafted packet containing a zero-length TCP option. The malformed packet forces the Packet:parse_options() function in nselib/packet.lua to allocate objects in an infinite loop, causing an out-of-memory condition that results in application crash.