CVE-2026-34183
HighCVSS 7.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk41th percentile - higher than 41% of all known CVEs
Summary
A remote peer can exhaust heap memory of a QUIC server or client by flooding it with packets containing PATH_CHALLENGE frames. The local QUIC stack allocates a PATH_RESPONSE frame for each PATH_CHALLENGE, freed only upon acknowledgment by the remote peer – a malicious peer does not acknowledge, leading to unbounded memory allocation and denial of service. FIPS modules are not affected.
Risk Assessment
An attacker can remotely crash applications using QUIC (e.g., HTTP/3 servers) by exhausting memory.
Recommendation
Update OpenSSL to a version containing the fix (e.g., 3.6.x, 3.5.x, 3.4.x, 3.0.x with appropriate patching).
Other vulnerabilities in OpenSSL
See all- CVE-2016-8610High
A denial of service flaw was found in OpenSSL 0.9.8, 1.0.1, 1.0.2 through 1.0.2h, and 1.1.0 in the way the TLS/SSL protocol defined processing of ALERT packets during a connection handshake. A remote attacker could use this flaw to make a TLS/SSL server consume an excessive amount of CPU and fail to accept connections from other clients.
- CVE-2017-3731High
CVE-2017-3731 affects SSL/TLS servers and clients running on 32-bit hosts that may crash due to an out-of-bounds read caused by a truncated packet. For OpenSSL 1.1.0, the crash can be triggered using the CHACHA20/POLY1305 cipher, and for OpenSSL 1.0.2 using RC4-MD5.
- CVE-2017-3730High
In OpenSSL 1.1.0 before 1.1.0d, a malicious server can supply bad parameters for a DHE or ECDHE key exchange, leading to the client attempting to dereference a NULL pointer, resulting in a client crash.
- CVE-2016-7054High
In OpenSSL 1.1.0 before 1.1.0c, TLS connections using *-CHACHA20-POLY1305 ciphersuites are susceptible to a DoS attack by corrupting larger payloads. This can result in an OpenSSL crash.
- CVE-2016-7052High
OpenSSL 1.0.2i has a vulnerability that allows remote attackers to cause application crashes by triggering a CRL operation, leading to a NULL pointer dereference.
- CVE-2016-6305High
The ssl3_read_bytes function in OpenSSL 1.1.0 before version 1.1.0a allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) by triggering a zero-length record in an SSL_peek call.
- CVE-2016-6304High
Multiple memory leaks in t1_lib.c in OpenSSL before 1.0.1u, 1.0.2 before 1.0.2i, and 1.1.0 before 1.1.0a allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via large OCSP Status Request extensions.
- CVE-2016-6302High
The tls_decrypt_ticket function in OpenSSL before 1.1.0 does not consider the HMAC size during validation of the ticket length, allowing remote attackers to cause a denial of service via a ticket that is too short.
- CVE-2016-2179High
The DTLS implementation in OpenSSL before 1.1.0 does not properly restrict the lifetime of queue entries associated with unused out-of-order messages. This allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by maintaining many crafted DTLS sessions simultaneously.
- CVE-2016-2176High
The X509_NAME_oneline function in OpenSSL before 1.0.1t and 1.0.2 before 1.0.2h allows remote attackers to obtain sensitive information from process stack memory or cause a denial of service (buffer over-read) via crafted EBCDIC ASN.1 data.
Original NVD description (English source)
Issue summary: Remote peer may exhaust heap memory of the QUIC server or client by flooding it with packets containing PATH_CHALLENGE frames. Impact summary: A malicious remote peer can cause an unbounded memory allocation which can lead to an abnormal termination of the application acting as a QUIC client or server and a Denial of Service. A remote peer may exhaust heap memory by flooding the local QUIC stack with PATH_CHALLENGE frames. The local QUIC stack allocates a PATH_RESPONSE frame for every PATH_CHALLENGE it receives. The allocated PATH_RESPONSE frame gets freed only when the remote peer acknowledges reception of the PATH_RESPONSE frame which will not be done by a malicious peer. The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, and 3.0 are not affected by this issue. The QUIC stack is outside of OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.