CVE-2023-49295: quic-go's path validation mechanism can cause denial of service

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-01-10 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

quic-go is an implementation of the QUIC protocol (RFC 9000, RFC 9001, RFC 9002) in Go. An attacker can cause its peer to run out of memory sending a large number of PATH_CHALLENGE frames. The receiver is supposed to respond to each PATH_CHALLENGE frame with a PATH_RESPONSE frame. The attacker can prevent the receiver from sending out (the vast majority of) these PATH_RESPONSE frames by collapsing the peers congestion window (by selectively acknowledging received packets) and by manipulating the peer's RTT estimate. This vulnerability has been patched in versions 0.37.7, 0.38.2 and 0.39.4.

Affected products

quic-go: before 0.37.7; from 0.38.0 before 0.38.2; from 0.39.0 before 0.39.4; 0.40.0 — fixed in 0.37.7, 0.38.2, 0.39.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: quic-go 0.37.7, 0.38.2, 0.39.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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