CVE-2026-32746, which has a CVSS score of 9.8, indicates that Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a major weakness in the GNU InetUtils Telnet daemon (telnetd). The weakness is an out-of-bounds write in the LINEMODE Set Local Characters (SLC) handler, which results in a buffer overflow condition. This flaw affects all versions up to 2.7. Attackers are able to execute code with higher privileges in all versions up to 2.7. The Israeli Cybersecurity Company Dream discovered this flaw on 11 March 2026. Researchers have stated that this flaw can be triggered during the Telnet protocol’s first handshake process, which happens before the user is authenticated. This means that an attacker does not have to be authenticated or even user interactive to do this. All that is needed is for the remote attacker to connect to port 23, and the flaw will be triggered. The flaw is a pre-Login flaw, which is what makes the flaw so dangerous. The flaw enables the attacker to execute arbitrary writes on some corrupted regions of the controlled output memory, and to gain an arbitrary control of the whole memory. Because telnetd is designed to execute remote control code with root privileges, this system can be used by attackers to obtain complete control of any system. This can be used by attackers to create everlasting backdoors to illicit and personal information and can even be used to distribute this on an entire system or network. Organizations should take precautionary measures until an official patch is expected after April 1, 2026. These measures include disabling Telnet services, firewall port 23 access, running telnetd with limited privileges, and system isolation for Telnet. Significantly, this disclosure comes soon after another actively exploited telnetd vulnerability (CVE-2026-24061) underscoring the persistent dangers of legacy protocols.
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