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CVE-2026-42772

medium

Issue summary: The QUIC stream reassembly algorithm performance deteriorates progressively as packets are arriving out of order.

Vendor / product: Openssl — openssl

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
5.3
5.3 (CVSS v3.1)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Severity source: NVD CVSS v3.1 (134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0)
Timeline (UTC)
Published: 2026-09-29 16:17
Modified: 2026-10-08 01:18
NVD status: Analyzed
Last synced 3 days ago
Verified against the source API 2026-10-27 06:56 UTC
Exploitation
Not listed in CISA KEV (as of last catalog sync)
Absence from KEV does not mean a CVE is not exploited. Exploitation status: unknown (no authoritative evidence in our sources).

Affected products

openssl / openssl ≥3.4.0 <3.4.8, ≥3.5.0 <3.5.9, ≥3.6.0 <3.6.5, ≥4.0.0 <4.0.3

Weakness classification (CWE)

Source: NVD / CISA. “NVD-CWE-Other” and “NVD-CWE-noinfo” mean NVD could not assign a specific weakness.

Mitigation & advisories

Vendor advisory: https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260929.txt
Patch / mitigation: https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/32d0ed8afe1b8c3e7ece725b44663da3d7087a09
Patch / mitigation: https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/ca8402e273af4de5b3f04fa61a0f0c02ce3ae20e
Patch / mitigation: https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/eb2becc0a4baea7f3050a247834d0e5c2ebe1773
Patch / mitigation: https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/f42ae513bbda513b3c121d54834040ee4a0eae1a

References

Data sources

NVD CVE API 2.0 — fetched 2026-10-27 06:56 UTC · record ↗

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