Buffer overflow in H2o Quicly
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.
Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow
EPSS: 0.005 (40.4th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.
Affected products
- H2o Quicly — versions < 8b178e6
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- security-advisories@github.com (x_refsource_CONFIRM, Third Party Advisory)
- security-advisories@github.com (Patch, x_refsource_MISC)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-44436?
- CVE-2026-44436 is a high-severity vulnerability in H2o Quicly, classified under Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (Classic Buffer Overflow). CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-07-16.
- How severe is CVE-2026-44436?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.