Vulnerability Database

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Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2026-75804 — openssl / openssl

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Issue summary: OpenSSL QUIC stack does not enforce connection level flow control for streams. Remote peers may send more bytes as long as they fit within the stream flow control limits.

Impact summary: A malicious remote peer may exploit the lack of connection flow control for streams to make the QUIC stack receive ~100MB of memory instead of 768 KiB (default flow control window size).

CWE: CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Description: The local QUIC stack advertises two flow control limits to its remote peer: stream flow control limit and connection flow control limit. The remote peer must follow both limits when transmitting stream data.

Whenever the local QUIC stack receives a stream frame, it validates that the size of the received stream frame stays within flow control limits. If either limit is exceeded (stream level or connection level), then the QUIC stack must close the connection with a flow control error.

The vulnerable OpenSSL QUIC stack enforces the stream-level but not the connection-level limit. To exploit the issue, three conditions must be met:

  • the remote peer opens several streams
  • each stream must stay within the stream-level flow control limit
  • there must be no zero-offset byte sent on any of the streams (to prevent the vulnerable QUIC stack from consuming data). By meeting the conditions above, the remote peer may make the local stack allocate 2 x MAX_STREAMS x (stream flow control limit) bytes of memory. MAX_STREAMS defaults to 100, and the limit applies to both bidirectional and unidirectional streams, making it 200 in total. The default flow control window for a stream is 512kB. The remote peer may force the vulnerable QUIC stack to allocate 100MB of heap per connection.

FIPS impact: no The FIPS module is not affected as the QUIC implementation is outside of the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

  • Published: Sep 29, 2026
  • Updated: Oct 23, 2026
  • CVE: CVE-2026-75804
  • Severity: Medium
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: Medium
  • Score: 5.3
  • AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

CWEs:

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Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

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