CVE-2026-33780

/// Technical description

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:

*

/// Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

/// References