CVE-2026-42772 PUBLISHED

Potential CPU DoS via O(n^2) Fragment Reassembly in QUIC

Assigner: openssl
Reserved: 29.04.2026 Published: 29.09.2026 Updated: 29.09.2026

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.

Product Status

Vendor OpenSSL
Product OpenSSL
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 4.0.0 to 4.0.3 (excl.)
  • affected from 3.6.0 to 3.6.5 (excl.)
  • affected from 3.5.0 to 3.5.9 (excl.)
  • affected from 3.4.0 to 3.4.8 (excl.)

Credits

  • Saku0512 reporter
  • Opal Wright (Trail of Bits) reporter
  • Alexandr Nedvedicky remediation developer

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity CWE