High severity · published Oct 8, 2026
CVE-2026-44031
Uncontrolled recursion in the DCMTK DICOM dataset parser allows unauthenticated remote denial of service
7.5
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Uncontrolled recursion in DcmSequenceOfItems::read() and DcmItem::read() in the dcmdata library of OFFIS DCMTK 3.7.0 allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service (stack exhaustion and process crash) via a DICOM dataset containing deeply nested sequences (SQ elements). The dataset can be sent in a C-STORE request to storescp, dcmrecv, dcmqrscp, or any other DICOM service built on DCMTK, because the received dataset is parsed before any authentication takes place. Local tools such as dcmdump also crash when opening such a file. The issue is fixed in commit 885ff0f10372bd589b5f44cea974f28a3964cb0f, which adds a configurable sequence nesting depth limit (default 64).
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 33% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
DC
DCMTK · OFFIS
3.7.0 · source: vendor
Affected product
DC
DCMTK
OFFIS
More from DCMTK
9.8
CVE-2026-5663
OFFIS DCMTK storescp storescp.cc executeOnEndOfStudy os command injection
9.8
CVE-2022-2120
OFFIS DCMTK's (All versions prior to 3.6.7) service class user (SCU) is vulnerable to relative path traversal, allowing an attacker to write DICOM files into arbitrary directories…
9.8
CVE-2022-2119
OFFIS DCMTK's (All versions prior to 3.6.7) service class provider (SCP) is vulnerable to path traversal, allowing an attacker to write DICOM files into arbitrary directories…
9.8
CVE-2019-1010228
OFFIS.de DCMTK 3.6.3 and below is affected by: Buffer Overflow
8.2
CVE-2026-97059
DCMTK through 3.7.0 Heap Over-read via NumberOfFrames