CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-0251 — Juniper Junos security vulnerability

High CVSS 8.6

A NULL Pointer Dereference vulnerability in the Captive Portal Content Delivery (CPCD) services daemon (cpcd) of Juniper Networks Junos OS on MX Series with MS-PIC, MS-SPC3, MS-MIC or MS-MPC allows an attacker to send malformed HTTP packets to the device thereby causing a Denial of Service (DoS), crashing the Multiservices PIC Management Daemon (mspmand) process thereby denying users the ability to login, while concurrently impacting other mspmand services and traffic through the device. Continued receipt and processing of these malformed packets will create a sustained Denial of Service (DoS) condition. While the Services PIC is restarting, all PIC services will be bypassed until the Services PIC completes its boot process. An attacker sending these malformed HTTP packets to the device who is not part of the Captive Portal experience is not able to exploit this issue. This issue is not applicable to MX RE-based CPCD platforms. This issue affects: Juniper Networks Junos OS on MX Series 17.3 version 17.3R1 and later versions prior to 17.4 versions 17.4R2-S9, 17.4R3-S2; 18.1 versions prior to 18.1R3-S9; 18.2 versions prior to 18.2R3-S3; 18.3 versions prior to 18.3R3-S1; 18.4 version…

Severity
High
CVSS
8.6 (3.1)
Published
2021-04-22
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-476

Affected products

  • juniper / junos / 17.3

Showing 1 representative product identities from 129 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption

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Check exposure

  • Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
  • Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
  • Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
  • Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
  • Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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