Arista EOS: Denial of service via crafted BGP packet in VPLS-BGP
Summary
Arista EOS on affected platforms with VPLS-BGP enabled can be made to restart the BGP agent through a specially crafted BGP packet. The attacker must first establish a BGP session with the provider-edge (PE) router. The impact is limited to availability (service interruption) and the CVE record does not describe code execution or data disclosure.
Affected
- Arista EOS 4.33.0F through 4.33.10M
- Arista EOS 4.34.0F through 4.34.8M
- Arista EOS 4.35.0F through 4.35.6M
- Arista EOS 4.36.0F through 4.36.2F
- Only with VPLS-BGP enabled; default configuration is unaffected according to the CNA record
- Listed platforms include 7280R3, 7500R3 and 7800R3 Series (per secondary sources)
Fixed in
Unknown. Check Arista's security advisory 0214 for the fixed releases. Do not assume a fix from the upper version bounds above.
Workaround
Unknown. No official workaround was found in the retrieved sources. Check Arista's advisory.
Exploitation
- No evidence of exploitation in the wild found.
- No public proof of concept found.
- KEV status: not verified against CISA's catalogue; one secondary aggregator lists it as not in KEV.
Our recommendation
- Check whether any EOS device runs VPLS-BGP and whether it is on an affected version.
- Apply the fixed EOS release from Arista's advisory once confirmed.
- Restrict which peers may establish BGP sessions with PE routers (ACLs, TTL security, peer authentication).
- Limit BGP exposure to known provider or core neighbours.
- For most SMEs this is a planned patch, not an emergency, since the affected feature is rarely used in SME networks.
Public exploits
PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit and Exploit-DB list nothing for this CVE.
Research sources
- Arista Security Advisory 0214 www.arista.com
- CVE.org CVE Record CVE-2026-120980 www.cve.org
- Threatint CVE-2026-120980 cve.threatint.com
- Strix CVE-2026-120980 www.strix.ai
Researched and written up in English and German by an AI (Claude by Anthropic) based on NVD, CISA, EPSS and the sources listed. The vendor information is authoritative. Researched on 11 Nov 2026, 14:44.
Original description (NVD)
On affected platforms running Arista EOS with VPLS-BGP enabled, an attacker who has established a BGP session with the PE routers can send a specially crafted BGP packet to cause the BGP agent to restart unexpectedly.
Sources
The tracker combines official, freely usable data sources – updated continuously:
- NVD (NIST) – CVEs, rating (CVSS), affected products
- CISA KEV – vulnerabilities confirmed by CISA as actively exploited
- CISA Vulnrichment – CISA assessment (SSVC) in the official CVE record
- FIRST EPSS – probability of exploitation
- Microsoft MSRC – Patch Tuesday: vulnerabilities, severity, updates
- PoC-in-GitHub – public proof-of-concept repositories
- Metasploit (Rapid7) – modules of the Metasploit Framework
- Exploit-DB (OffSec) – archive of public exploits (links only)
- Patch days: official vendor pages (linked per vendor) (Vendor patch days)
This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS data © FIRST.org.
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