CVE-2026-96416

A flaw was found in Wireshark. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by convincing a user to open a specially crafted packet capture file or by injecting malformed IEEE 802.11 wireless network traffic. Processing these invalid packets causes an application crash in the protocol dissector, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Disable the IEEE 802.11 dissector in Wireshark or avoid processing packet captures from untrusted sources.

1. Dissector configuration:

• In the Wireshark graphical interface, navigate to Analyze -> Enabled Protocols, search for "IEEE 802.11", and deselect it.
• When using command-line tools like TShark, disable the protocol using the --disable-protocol flag: tshark --disable-protocol wlan -r capture.pcap

2. Operational controls: Avoid opening capture files from untrusted sources or capturing live traffic on untrusted wireless networks.

3. Package removal: If packet analysis tools are not required on the system, remove the package: sudo dnf remove wireshark

Caveats: Disabling the IEEE 802.11 protocol prevents parsing and decoding of wireless frame structures, leaving traffic presented only as raw payload data. Removing the package removes Wireshark binaries and associated CLI tools.