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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2026-14456 json

Unbounded Memory Growth in QUIC Server Incoming Channel Queue

published 2026-08-13 2 mo ago modified 2026-11-06 2 d ago also EUVD-2026-57919

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.7%
EPSS 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 54%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Issue summary: When an OpenSSL QUIC server (Listener SSL object) processes valid QUIC Initial packets for unknown destination connection IDs, it can allocate and queue new incoming channels without enforcing any limit.

Impact summary: A remote peer that can make many Initial packets reach the server listener faster than the application accepts connections, can cause the memory allocated to store the per-channel state to grow without any limits, potentially making the QUIC listener unavailable and causing Denial of Service.

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

Description: The function that handles inbound QUIC packets uses Connection-Id from the packet header to find an existing connection (QUIC channel). If no existing connection is found and the packet type is INITIAL, the function treats the packet as a new connection. It allocates a new channel object and inserts it into a queue where it waits to be accepted by the local application with SSL_accept(3ossl). The memory occupied by these initial channel objects may grow without bounds if the application is not able to call SSL_accept() frequently enough to serve these inbound connection requests.

The issue is present since OpenSSL 3.5 when the QUIC server implementation was added.

The fix introduces a limit for pending connections. The default limit is set to 256 pending connections (waiting to be accepted by the local application). Applications may change the default by calling SSL_set_value_uint(3ossl).

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

Patch / fix

  • OpenSSL OpenSSL 3.5.8, 3.6.4, 4.0.2
  • openssl Debian 13 3.5.7-1~deb13u2
  • openssl Debian 14 3.6.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-14456

  • openssl Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 3.5.5-1ubuntu3.4

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-14456

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • openssl RHEL 9 1:3.5.8-1.el9_8
  • openssl-libs RHEL 9 1:3.5.8-1.el9_8
  • openssl-perl RHEL 9 1:3.5.8-1.el9_8
  • openssl RHEL 10.2 1:3.5.8-1.el10_2
  • openssl-libs RHEL 10.2 1:3.5.8-1.el10_2
  • openssl-perl RHEL 10.2 1:3.5.8-1.el10_2
  • openssl hummingbird 1 3.5.6-0.5.hum1
  • openssl-libs hummingbird 1 3.5.6-0.5.hum1

red hat advisories RHSA-2026:67165RHSA-2026:67154RHSA-2026:56097

  • openssl-3 SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 3.5.0-150700.5.50.1
  • openssl-3 SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 3.5.0-160000.10.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:4039-1SUSE-SU-2026:23463-1SUSE-SU-2026:23609-1

  • openssl-3 openSUSE Leap 16.0 3.5.0-160000.10.1
  • openssl-3 openSUSE Tumbleweed 3.5.3-8.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:21744-1openSUSE-SU-2026:11623-1

  • openssl AlmaLinux 10 1:3.5.8-1.el10_2.alma.1
  • openssl-libs AlmaLinux 10 1:3.5.8-1.el10_2.alma.1
  • openssl-perl AlmaLinux 10 1:3.5.8-1.el10_2.alma.1
  • openssl AlmaLinux 9 1:3.5.8-1.el9_8
  • openssl-libs AlmaLinux 9 1:3.5.8-1.el9_8
  • openssl-perl AlmaLinux 9 1:3.5.8-1.el9_8

almalinux advisories ALSA-2026:67154ALSA-2026:67165

  • openssl Rocky Linux 9 1:3.5.8-1.el9_8
  • openssl Rocky Linux 10 1:3.5.8-1.el10_2

rocky linux advisories RLSA-2026:67165RLSA-2026:67154

  • openssl Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 3.5.8-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2026-14456

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-14456 updated cvss 7.5

openssl: OpenSSL: Denial of Service via unbounded memory growth in QUIC server

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Cert Manager support for Red Hat OpenShift release 1.20 cert-manager/cert-manager-operator-rhel9 1790272426, cert-manager/cert-manager-operator-rhel9 1790589855, cert-manager/jetstack-cert-manager-rhel9 1790223279, cert-manager/jetstack-cert-manager-rhel9 1790589912, cert-manager/cert-manager-istio-csr-rhel9 1790223719, cert-manager/cert-manager-istio-csr-rhel9 1790589914, +1 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:72475
  • Red Hat Cost Management 4 costmanagement/costmanagement-metrics-rhel9-operator 1790844333
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:81201
  • Red Hat Cost Management On-Premise 1 costmanagement/costmanagement-ui-rhel10 1791460851
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:79357
  • Red Hat Developer Hub 1.10 rhdh/rhdh-hub-rhel9 1791311495
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:79088
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 9) openssl-perl 3.5.8-1.el9_8
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:67165
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 10) openssl-perl 3.5.8-1.el10_2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:67154
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 9) openssl 3.5.8-1.el9_8, openssl-libs 3.5.8-1.el9_8
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:67165
show 5 more
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 10) openssl 3.5.8-1.el10_2, openssl-libs 3.5.8-1.el10_2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:67154
  • Red Hat Hardened Images openssl 3.5.6-0.5.hum1, openssl-libs 3.5.6-0.5.hum1, openssl-perl 3.5.6-0.5.hum1, openssl-config-fips 3.5.6-0.5.hum1, openssl-devel-engine 3.5.6-0.5.hum1, openssl-fips-provider-upstream 3.5.6-0.5.hum1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:56097
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.22 rhcos 4.22.9.8.202611032353
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:95346
  • Red Hat Update Infrastructure 5 rhui5/cds-rhel9 1790241954, rhui5/rhua-rhel9 1790242004, rhui5/haproxy-rhel9 1790241900, rhui5/installer-rhel9 1789482961, rhui5/cds-kubernetes-rhel9 1789479916
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:67956
  • Red Hat Cert Manager support for Red Hat OpenShift release 1.20 cert-manager/jetstack-cert-manager-acmesolver-rhel9 1790223630 Red Hat Cost Management 4 costmanagement/costmanagement-metrics-operator-bundle 1790851152 Red Hat Developer Hub 1.10 rhdh/rhdh-rhel9-operator 1791219676, rhdh/rhdh-operator-bundle 1791315788, rhdh/rhdh-must-gather-rhel9 1788278523, rhdh/rhdh-rag-content-rhel9 1791168570 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 openssl, openssl-libs, openssl-perl Red Hat JBoss Core Services jbcs-httpd24-openssl, jbcs-httpd24-openssl-libs, jbcs-httpd24-openssl-perl, jbcs-openssl-win6-x86_64.zip 3.5.5-SP4 Red Hat JBoss Web Server 6 jws-optional-native-components-win6-x86_64.zip 6.2.4.ER1
    +3 more products
    Red Hat JBoss Web Server 7 jws-optional-native-components-win6-x86_64.zip 6.2.4.ER1 Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-llama-stack-k8s-operator-rhel9 Red Hat Update Infrastructure 5 rhui5/cds-rhel9 1789479900, rhui5/rhua-rhel9 1789478095, rhui5/haproxy-rhel9 1789479891, rhui5/installer-rhel9 1790241922, rhui5/cds-kubernetes-rhel9 1790241897
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.73% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 54% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • OpenSSL OpenSSL

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.