CVE-2026-42772
Impact summary: A remote QUIC peer that completes the handshake can create a connection-scoped CPU pressure and potentially a Denial of Service using compliant STREAM frames inside the advertised receive window, with low attacker bandwidth.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.48%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
Issue summary: The QUIC stream reassembly algorithm performance deteriorates progressively as packets are arriving out of order. The worst case has a quadratic complexity proportional to the number of stream frames kept in the buffer for the received stream data. Impact summary: A remote QUIC peer that completes the handshake can create a connection-scoped CPU pressure and potentially a Denial of Service using compliant STREAM frames inside the advertised receive window, with low attacker bandwidth. CWE: CWE-407: Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity Description: OpenSSL manages received QUIC stream fragments using a doubly-linked list. While it optimizes for append operations (at the end of the list), it falls back to a head-to-tail linear search for any fragment that does not immediately follow the current `tail`. By manipulating the sequence of offsets, an attacker can force the server to perform O(n^2) operations, consuming excessive CPU time for the QUIC process. FIPS impact: no The FIPS module is not affected as the QUIC implementation is outside of the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
- CVSS 3.1
- 5.3 MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- EPSS
- 0.48% probability · 41th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-407
- Affected
- openssl/openssl
- Source
- openssl-security@openssl.org
EPSS moved from 0.2% on 30 September 2026 to 0.5% on 26 October 2026.
References
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/32d0ed8afe1b8c3e7ece725b44663da3d7087a09Patch
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/ca8402e273af4de5b3f04fa61a0f0c02ce3ae20ePatch
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/eb2becc0a4baea7f3050a247834d0e5c2ebe1773Patch
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/f42ae513bbda513b3c121d54834040ee4a0eae1aPatch
- https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260929.txtVendor Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.