Overview
The cybersecurity community has identified a critical Use After Free vulnerability, labeled as CVE-2025-52946, that affects Juniper Networks Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved. This vulnerability can potentially lead to system compromise or data leakage, thereby posing a significant threat to organizations that have not implemented corrective measures.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-52946
Severity: High (7.5)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: A successful exploit can lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) condition, possibly causing system compromise or data leakage.
Affected Products
Escape the Surveillance Era
Most apps won’t tell you the truth.
They’re part of the problem.
Phone numbers. Emails. Profiles. Logs.
It’s all fuel for surveillance.
Ameeba Chat gives you a way out.
- • No phone number
- • No email
- • No personal info
- • Anonymous aliases
- • End-to-end encrypted
Chat without a trace.
Product | Affected Versions
Junos OS | All versions before 21.2R3-S9, all versions of 21.4, from 22.2 before 22.2R3-S6, from 22.4 before 22.4R3-S5, from 23.2 before 23.2R2-S3, from 23.4 before 23.4R2-S4, from 24.2 before 24.2R2
Junos OS Evolved | All versions before 22.4R3-S5-EVO, from 23.2-EVO before 23.2R2-S3-EVO, from 23.4-EVO before 23.4R2-S4-EVO, from 24.2-EVO before 24.2R2-EVO
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability resides in the routing protocol daemon (rpd) of Juniper Networks Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending a BGP update with a specifically malformed AS PATH, causing the rpd to crash and lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) condition. Continuous receipt of the malformed AS PATH attribute will cause a sustained DoS condition. This exploit requires a BGP session to be already established and is only effective on systems with BGP traceoptions enabled.
Conceptual Example Code
This is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited:
bgp-update-send --as-path "malformed-as-path" --target "target-ip-address"
This shell command represents an attacker sending a malicious BGP update to the target system with a specifically malformed AS PATH, triggering the Use After Free vulnerability in the rpd, and causing it to crash.

