High · published June 9, 2026
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.