High [CVE-2026-96541] Gnome-remote-desktop: gnome-remote-desktop: unauthenticated rdp sockets lack a handshake deadline
This high-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-96541 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
Aggregated and source-linked by VulniPulse. Data sources, validation and limitations.
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Summary
A denial-of-service flaw was found in gnome-remote-desktop. An unauthenticated remote attacker can open RDP connections without completing the handshake and retain the connection-throttling slots indefinitely because no pre-authentication handshake deadline is enforced.
By exhausting the global connection limit, an attacker can prevent new RDP clients from connecting until a holding socket is closed. By holding open unauthenticated RDP sockets indefinitely, an attacker can exhaust the default global connection limit.
Exploitation requires connecting from at least two distinct source IP addresses to fully utilize the default per-source and global connection limits. Existing authenticated RDP sessions remain unaffected.
Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 7.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H). Weakness: CWE-400.
Affected Red Hat products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. Red Hat does not currently list a fixing RHSA for this CVE.
Affected products named by the advisory: Red Hat package: gnome-remote-desktop.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 8 days ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 8 days ago·verify at source
Mitigation checklist
- Disable the RDP listener when it is not required, or restrict access to the RDP port to trusted networks or hosts at the network boundary. No application-level mitigation that preserves unrestricted RDP access is known.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 8 days ago·verify at source
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