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.
Weakness
The product manages a group of objects or resources and performs a separate memory allocation for each object, but it does not properly limit the total amount of memory that is consumed by all of the combined objects.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Openssl | Openssl | 3.4.0 (including) | 3.4.6 (excluding) |
| Openssl | Openssl | 3.5.0 (including) | 3.5.7 (excluding) |
| Openssl | Openssl | 3.6.0 (including) | 3.6.3 (excluding) |
| Openssl | Openssl | 4.0.0 (including) | 4.0.0 (including) |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | RedHat | openssl-1:3.5.5-4.el10_2 | * |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | RedHat | openssl-1:3.5.5-4.el9_8 | * |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | RedHat | openssl-1:3.5.5-4.el9_8 | * |
| Red Hat Discovery 2 | RedHat | discovery/discovery-server-rhel9:1782159791 | * |
| Red Hat Discovery 2 | RedHat | discovery/discovery-ui-rhel9:1782166952 | * |
| Red Hat Update Infrastructure 5 | RedHat | rhui5/cds-rhel9:1781525684 | * |
| Red Hat Update Infrastructure 5 | RedHat | rhui5/haproxy-rhel9:1781525671 | * |
| Red Hat Update Infrastructure 5 | RedHat | rhui5/installer-rhel9:1781525693 | * |
| Red Hat Update Infrastructure 5 | RedHat | rhui5/rhua-rhel9:1781525739 | * |
| Nodejs | Ubuntu | esm-apps/jammy | * |
| Nodejs | Ubuntu | jammy | * |
| Openssl | Ubuntu | devel | * |
| Openssl | Ubuntu | questing | * |
| Openssl | Ubuntu | resolute | * |
Extended Description
While the product might limit the amount of memory that is allocated in a single operation for a single object (such as a malloc of an array), if an attacker can cause multiple objects to be allocated in separate operations, then this might cause higher total memory consumption than the developer intended, leading to a denial of service.
Potential Mitigations
Related Attack Patterns
References
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/5b306efb0b3779dfdd0803b4afc9d08c91f11517
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/7d06955ebe0ecf8adfd4c1e92018586da47ef9ac
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/d2e9efbe4900a373227deb136e8665401404ffac
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/fbaa83859c01ad64f497b757aaf51be7d05ed9eb
- https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260609.txt