CVE-2026-96541
HIGH 7.5 PoC AVAILABLEA denial-of-service flaw was found in gnome-remote-desktop. An unauthenticated remote attacker can open RDP connections without completing the handshake and retain the connection-throttling slots indefinitely because no pre-authentication handshake deadline is enforced. By exhausting the global connection limit, an attacker can prevent new RDP clients from connecting until a holding socket is closed.
Public exploit or PoC code exists. Modeled probability is still low, but the barrier to attack is reduced — watch closely.
Exploitation likelihood
0.8%chance of exploitation in 30 days · 56th percentile
Impact if exploited
7.5CVSS 3.1 · HIGH
- ConfidentialityNone
- IntegrityNone
- AvailabilityHigh
What an attacker needs
- ✓Access: Reachable over the network — no local access needed
- ✓Privileges: No account or privileges required
- ✓User interaction: No user interaction needed
- ✓Complexity: No special conditions — reliably repeatable
✓ lowers the bar for an attacker · ⚠ raises it
Proof of concept & exploit code
- reference https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop/-/issues/356
- github-search Search GitHub for public PoC repos
Test against your own equipment
curl -s https://vulnpedia.com/cve/CVE-2026-96541/poc.jsonMachine-readable PoC index for this CVE (for automation).Listed for defensive triage, patch verification, and authorized testing on systems you own. Machine-readable: /cve/CVE-2026-96541/poc.json
Affected
Vendors Red Hat
Products Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Weakness (CWE)
- CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
All CVSS metrics
- HIGH 7.5 v3.1 · CNA Primary
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - HIGH 7.5 v3.1 · NVD Secondary
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H