CVE-2026-44031
Description
Uncontrolled recursion in DcmSequenceOfItems::read() and DcmItem::read() in the dcmdata library of OFFIS DCMTK 3.7.0 allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion and process crash) via a DICOM dataset containing deeply nested sequences (SQ elements). The dataset can be sent in a C-STORE request to storescp, dcmrecv, dcmqrscp, or any other DICOM service built on DCMTK, because the received dataset is parsed before any authentication takes place. Local tools such as dcmdump also crash when opening such a file. The issue is fixed in commit 885ff0f10372bd589b5f44cea974f28a3964cb0f, which adds a configurable sequence nesting depth limit (default 64).
Predictions
Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.
Mitigations
No mitigations published for this CVE yet.
The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.
Propose a mitigation on Community Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here withsource_tier=community-verified.
References
CWEs
CWE-674
Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.
Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.