Medium severity · published Sep 29, 2026
CVE-2026-42772
Potential CPU DoS via O(n^2) Fragment Reassembly in QUIC
5.3
CVSS
0.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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 vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.5% · higher than 41% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
OP
OpenSSL · OpenSSL
4.0.0 before 4.0.3; 3.6.0 before 3.6.5; 3.5.0 before 3.5.9; 3.4.0 before 3.4.8 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-42772
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-42772
vendor-advisory
https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260929.txt
patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/f42ae513bbda513b3c121d54834040ee4a0eae1a
patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/32d0ed8afe1b8c3e7ece725b44663da3d7087a09
patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/ca8402e273af4de5b3f04fa61a0f0c02ce3ae20e
patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/eb2becc0a4baea7f3050a247834d0e5c2ebe1773
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