AI Threat Alert
CVE-2026-44436
HIGHQuicly is an IETF QUIC protocol implementation intended primarily for use within the H2O HTTP server. Prior to commit 8b178e6, Quicly is vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack through connection state corruption. In QUIC Invariants, the maximum length of a Connection ID is 255 bytes, while QUIC...
Full CISO analysis pending enrichment.
How severe is it?
What is the attack surface?
What should I do?
No patch available
Monitor for updates. Consider compensating controls or temporary mitigations.
Which compliance frameworks are affected?
Compliance analysis pending. Sign in for full compliance mapping when available.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CVE-2026-44436?
Quicly is an IETF QUIC protocol implementation intended primarily for use within the H2O HTTP server. Prior to commit 8b178e6, Quicly is vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack through connection state corruption. In QUIC Invariants, the maximum length of a Connection ID is 255 bytes, while QUIC version 1 further restricts the maximum to 20 bytes. Quicly implements QUIC version 1 and therefore its CID buffers are limited to 20 bytes. However, to be able to respond to unknown versions of QUIC, its packet decoder accepts Connection IDs of up to 255 bytes. As its CID buffers are merely 20 bytes long, Quicly must reject QUIC version 1 packets with Connection IDs longer than that. The command line tool bundled with Quicly has had that check, however the library itself lacked such enforcement. As a consequence, when used by applications that lack their own enforcement, the connection state becoming inconsistent to buffer overrun. Fortunately, the overflow stops within the allocated chunk of memory, but nevertheless, the bug leads to assertion failures. This issue has been fixed by commit 8b178e6.
Is CVE-2026-44436 actively exploited?
No confirmed active exploitation of CVE-2026-44436 has been reported, but organizations should still patch proactively.
How to fix CVE-2026-44436?
No patch is currently available. Monitor vendor advisories for updates.
What is the CVSS score for CVE-2026-44436?
CVE-2026-44436 has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (HIGH).
What are the technical details?
Original Advisory
Quicly is an IETF QUIC protocol implementation intended primarily for use within the H2O HTTP server. Prior to commit 8b178e6, Quicly is vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack through connection state corruption. In QUIC Invariants, the maximum length of a Connection ID is 255 bytes, while QUIC version 1 further restricts the maximum to 20 bytes. Quicly implements QUIC version 1 and therefore its CID buffers are limited to 20 bytes. However, to be able to respond to unknown versions of QUIC, its packet decoder accepts Connection IDs of up to 255 bytes. As its CID buffers are merely 20 bytes long, Quicly must reject QUIC version 1 packets with Connection IDs longer than that. The command line tool bundled with Quicly has had that check, however the library itself lacked such enforcement. As a consequence, when used by applications that lack their own enforcement, the connection state becoming inconsistent to buffer overrun. Fortunately, the overflow stops within the allocated chunk of memory, but nevertheless, the bug leads to assertion failures. This issue has been fixed by commit 8b178e6.
Weaknesses (CWE)
CWE-120 Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow')
Primary
CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write
Primary
CWE-120 Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow') CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write CWE-120 — Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow'): The product copies an input buffer to an output buffer without verifying that the size of the input buffer is less than the size of the output buffer.
- [Requirements] Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid. For example, many languages that perform their own memory management, such as Java and Perl, are not subject to buffer overflows. Other languages, such as Ada and C#, typically provide overflow protection, but the protection can be disabled by the programmer. Be wary that a language's interface to native code may still be subject to overflows, even if the language itself is theoretically safe.
- [Architecture and Design] Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid. Examples include the Safe C String Library (SafeStr) by Messier and Viega [REF-57], and the Strsafe.h library from Microsoft [REF-56]. These libraries provide safer versions of overflow-prone string-handling functions.
Source: MITRE CWE corpus.
CVSS Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H