CVE-2020-9428: 
Wireshark vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2020-9428 affects Wireshark versions 3.2.0 to 3.2.1, 3.0.0 to 3.0.8, and 2.6.0 to 2.6.14, where the EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) dissector could crash. The vulnerability was discovered and disclosed in February 2020, with fixes released in versions 3.2.2, 3.0.9, and 2.6.15 (Wireshark Advisory).

The vulnerability is classified as an out-of-bounds read (CWE-125) with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (HIGH). The issue was caused by improper parsing in the EAP dissector component and was addressed by implementing more careful sscanf parsing in the epan/dissectors/packet-eap.c file (NVD).

When exploited, this vulnerability could result in a Denial of Service (DoS) condition through application crashes. The impact occurs when processing malformed packet trace files or when capturing maliciously crafted network traffic (Wireshark Advisory, Gentoo Advisory).

The recommended mitigation is to upgrade to Wireshark versions 3.2.2, 3.0.9, 2.6.15 or later. Multiple Linux distributions have released security updates to address this vulnerability, including Debian (2.6.20-0+deb9u1), Gentoo (>=3.2.5), and openSUSE (Debian LTS, Gentoo Advisory).