CVE-2026-96417

A flaw was found in Wireshark. By convincing a user to open a specially crafted capture file containing malformed Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics (RF4CE) network traffic, an attacker can cause the RF4CE protocol dissector to crash. This issue primarily results in a Denial of Service (DoS) by terminating the application.

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 RF4CE dissector in Wireshark or tshark to prevent processing of malformed packets:

1. Graphical user interface: Navigate to Analyze -> Enabled Protocols, search for "RF4CE", uncheck the checkbox, and click OK.

2. Command-line interface (tshark): Invoke tshark with the protocol disabled:

tshark --disable-protocol rf4ce -r <capture_file>

3. Configuration file: Add the protocol identifier to the disabled protocols configuration file:

echo "rf4ce" >> ~/.config/wireshark/disabled_protos

Caveats: Disabling the RF4CE dissector prevents Wireshark from decoding RF4CE frames, displaying them only as raw payload data. Active Wireshark processes must be restarted for configuration file changes to take effect. As a general operational security practice, do not run Wireshark or tshark with elevated (root) privileges when inspecting untrusted capture files.