SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2026-34183

Issue summary: Remote peer may exhaust heap memory of the QUIC server or client by flooding it with packets containing PATH_CHALLENGE frames.

HIGH 7.5EPSS 1.05%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (1.05%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

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.

CVSS 3.1
7.5 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS
1.05% probability · 62th percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-1325
Affected
openssl/openssl
Source
openssl-security@openssl.org

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.