Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol implementations may improperly determine LSA recency in affected Quagga and downstream implementations (SUSE, openSUSE, and Red Hat packages)

published 2018-07-24 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-12345

cvss: 8.2; version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.1%; EPSS 1.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 64%
public exploits: 0; none known

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol implementations may improperly determine Link State Advertisement (LSA) recency for LSAs with MaxSequenceNumber. According to RFC 2328 section 13.1, for two instances of the same LSA, recency is determined by first comparing sequence numbers, then checksums, and finally MaxAge. In a case where the sequence numbers are the same, the LSA with the larger checksum is considered more recent, and will not be flushed from the Link State Database (LSDB). Since the RFC does not explicitly state that the values of links carried by a LSA must be the same when prematurely aging a self-originating LSA with MaxSequenceNumber, it is possible in vulnerable OSPF implementations for an attacker to craft a LSA with MaxSequenceNumber and invalid links that will result in a larger checksum and thus a 'newer' LSA that will not be flushed from the LSDB. Propagation of the crafted LSA can result in the erasure or alteration of the routing tables of routers within the routing domain, creating a denial of service condition or the re-routing of traffic on the network. CVE-2017-3224 has been reserved for Quagga and downstream implementations (SUSE, openSUSE, and Red Hat packages).

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2017-3224 updated 2026-11-05 cvss 5.3

quagga: OSPF implementation improperly determines LSA recency (VU#793496)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 quagga Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 quagga, quagga-contrib Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 quagga, quagga-contrib
affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

1.06% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 64% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.0	8.2	CVSS:3.0/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	4.3	AV:A/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P

Affected products

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) Protocol

Classification

Weakness

CWE-354 Improper Validation of Integrity Check Value
CWE-345 Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity

References

kb.cert.org /vuls/id/793496
third-party-advisory, us-government-resource

Sources

CVE List CVE-2017-3224
NVD CVE-2017-3224

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary