Vulnerability Details CVE-2026-28221
Wazuh is a free and open source platform used for threat prevention, detection, and response. From version 4.8.0 to before version 4.14.4, a stack-based buffer overflow exists in print_hex_string() in wazuh-remoted. The bug is triggered when formatting attacker-controlled bytes using sprintf(dst_buf + 2*i, "%.2x", src_buf[i]) on platforms where char is treated as signed and the compiled code sign-extends bytes before the variadic call. For input bytes such as 0xFF, the formatting can emit "ffffffff" (8 chars) instead of "ff" (2 chars), causing an out-of-bounds write past a fixed 2049-byte stack buffer. The vulnerable path is reachable remotely prior to any agent authentication/registration logic via TCP/1514 when an oversized length prefix causes the “unexpected message (hex)” diagnostic path to run. Additionally, the same unauthenticated oversized-message diagnostic path logs an attacker-controlled hex dump to /var/ossec/logs/ossec.log for each trigger, allowing remote log amplification that can degrade monitoring fidelity and consume disk/I/O. This log amplification is reachable even without triggering the sign-extension overflow (e.g., using bytes < 0x80). This issue has been patched in version 4.14.4.
Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score
EPSS Score 0.001
EPSS Ranking 17.7%
CVSS Severity
CVSS v3 Score 6.5
References
Products affected by CVE-2026-28221
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.10.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.10.1
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.10.2
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.10.3
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.11.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.11.1
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.11.2
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.12.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.13.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.13.1
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.14.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.14.1
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.8.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.8.1
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.8.2
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.9.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.9.1
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cpe:2.3:a:wazuh:wazuh:4.9.2