What is CVE-2026-72712?

CVE-2026-72712 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Nmap Project, classified under Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition (Infinite Loop). CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2026-08-11.

How severe is CVE-2026-72712?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.

Vulnerability in Nmap Project

CVE-2026-72712

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.

Published 2026-08-11 · last modified 2026-09-24.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.005 (40.3th percentile), scored 2026-09-27.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 40th percentile — 40.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.004 · newest: 0.005 · change: +0.001

Affected products

Nmap Project — versions 0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-835 — Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition (Infinite Loop)

References

github.com/nmap/nmap (product)
github.com/nmap/nmap/issues/3368 (issue-tracking)
github.com/nmap/nmap/commit/7ef4ee030a0023fe22616387a000032e1a678b6a (patch)
www.vulncheck.com/advisories/nmap-denial-of-service-via-zero-length-tcp-option-… (third-party-advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-72712?: CVE-2026-72712 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Nmap Project, classified under Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition (Infinite Loop). CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2026-08-11.
How severe is CVE-2026-72712?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.