The issue is related to the lack of validation of a key-value field in the Splunk-to-Splunk protocol, resulting in a denial-of-service in Splunk Enterprise instances configured to index Universal Forwarder traffic. It does not impact Universal Forwarders. When Splunk forwarding is secured using TLS or a Token, the attack requires compromising the certificate or token, or both. Implementation of either or both reduces the severity to Medium.