A Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime vulnerability in the Layer 2 Address Learning Daemon (l2ald) of Juniper Networks Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved allows an adjacent, unauthenticated attacker to cause a memory leak ultimately leading to a Denial of Service (DoS). In an EVPN-MPLS scenario, routes learned from remote multi-homed Provider Edge (PE) devices are programmed as ESI routes. Due to a logic issue in the l2ald memory management, memory allocated for these routes is not released when there is churn for these routes. As a result, memory leaks in the l2ald process which will ultimately lead to a crash and restart of l2ald. Use the following command to monitor the memory consumption by l2ald: user@device> show system process extensive | match "PID|l2ald" This issue affects: Junos OS: * all versions before 22.4R3-S5, * 23.2 versions before 23.2R2-S3, * 23.4 versions before 23.4R2-S4, * 24.2 versions before 24.2R2; Junos OS Evolved: * all versions before 22.4R3-S5-EVO, * 23.2 versions before 23.2R2-S3-EVO, * 23.4 versions before 23.4R2-S4-EVO, * 24.2 versions before 24.2R2-EVO.
Published: 2026-04-09
Updated: 2026-04-17
Base Score: 6.1
Vector: CVSS2#AV:A/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C
Severity: Medium
Base Score: 6.5
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Severity: Medium
Base Score: 7.1
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:A/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:L
Severity: High
EPSS: 0.00016